The sale last night of a nearly complete collection of Robert Frank's photographs published as The Americans (Delpire 1958/Grove 1960) can be seen as a landmark event. The total high estimate for the 77 images [out of 83 images in the book] was $3,761,000. The sale total (including buyer's premium) is $3,739,375.

Two key images from the series, New Orleans (Trolley), estimated at $200,000-300,000, brought $237,500, as did Hoboken (Parade), above, estimated at $120,000-180,000. The third highest price, $162,500 was paid for Charleston, S.C., estimated at $60,000-$80,000. 

Various factors contributed to the high value placed on these photographs, from print quality and date printed (there was much more silver in enlarging papers available in the 1950s than two decades later, resulting in prints with a broad tonal scale and depth impossible to achieve today) to print size, to the way in which Frank cropped the image versus it's format as seen in the first edition of the book, and the historical value of the image itself (cover images generally acquire higher values by their nature).

Having seen the exhibition of the photographs prior to the auction (along with a fellow former Aperture book-maker), I was not surprised by the results. Print quality became the major subject of conversation as we moved through the beautifully installed exhibition; the images themselves, many of them established icons in the canon of mid-20th-century photography, became a given. My only regret was not having a copy of the book in hand while looking.

Following are links to some informative articles and resources on this extraordinary work of art:

Ralph Gibson on Robert Frank, December 9, 2015, here

The auction Catalogue, here [note: there is a great deal of useful information included in the online version]

The auction results summary, here

The Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art, here [includes many of the contact sheets that were included in the seminal 2009 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Yesterday's feature in DART, here