How Sotheby's Proves a Photograph Is Worth Over $1 Million

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:03]How do we know that this photograph should be worth over a million dollars and not just a couple hundred dollars?

[00:00:08]>> Don't you already know that?

[00:00:10]>> Yes, Greg. We already know that, but I'm here to prove it with science.

[00:00:14]>> Don't say my name. I think my name is Emily Berman. I'm the global head of Sabby's prints and photographs department based here in New York.

[00:00:33]>> My name is Luca Arian. I'm a photograph conservator. I specialize in preservation and treatment of photographic materials.

[00:00:40]>> We are in Long Island City today and we are investigating a beautiful early print of Edward Stiken's Balszac the open sky from 1908 which depicts Rodan's sculpture of the French novelist onore debalzac. This photograph is even more important as an early print because his negatives were destroyed in World War I, making essentially any additional prints of this image of this caliber impossible. The photograph, what it is, how it was made, when it is from, all of that comes together for us to determine if this is something that is worth hundreds of dollars or over a million dollars. I really hope that we find that this photograph is indeed some form of a pigment print or a gumbai chromate print. What I don't want to find is that it is anything that is modern. The stakes are high.

[00:01:37]There's really several different kinds of examination that we put each object through. The first is just visual analysis. We look for any visual clues that we can using your eye.

[00:01:48]Basically looking at it in raking light, what I am looking for are brush strokes or any indication of how this was coated because this is a process that is handcoated paper. And so here what I'm seeing is horizontal kind of patterns which would indicate either a really wide brush in this area or probably a roller of some kind.

[00:02:09]>> And that is something that we don't see in the later work and that you would never see in say a gelatin silver print.

[00:02:16]Step two, we're looking at the photograph under ultraviolet light to check for the presence of optical brighteners.

[00:02:22]>> Looking at the object under ultraviolet light rules out that it would be a more contemporary object. If it doesn't fluores or if it doesn't look bright, if it doesn't shine, it means that it's likely a pre-1955 print. There's no optical brightening agents. All I see is some of the adhesive from the linen tape that got on the matboard. But as suspected, nothing is fluoresing right off the bat. A good sign.

[00:02:43]>> Oh, cool.

[00:02:45]Now, something else that we're doing today that we don't always have the opportunity to do is to look at the photograph really hyper magnified using an industrialgrade microscope.

[00:02:58]>> I'm looking for paper fibers. I'm looking for surface architecture. Uh the difference between shadows and highlights. There should be some topography to it. I see brush marks, which is the artist's hand essentially applying the light sensitive layer. um and pigment which would differ from other photographic processes that are more standardized because they come on pre-made paper.

[00:03:23]>> There is nothing automatic about this photograph about this print. This is intensely unique.

[00:03:31]>> So if you want to take a look at the signature.

[00:03:34]>> Oh my goodness gracious.

[00:03:36]That is so cool. And that >> wow you just >> paper structure is exactly what we're looking for.

[00:03:45]>> Wow.

[00:03:48]Any photograph where you can feel where you can really see the artist's hand in the photographic print is above and beyond anything that you would get today in the digital age. You see Stiken's hand. It is very hard to qualify and to quantify how Stikken is the father of photography in many ways um in a short video form. But Stiken was important as an artist. He trained as a painter. He takes up photography and pushes the boundary of the medium when few others were doing so as effectively. This photograph was taken outdoors in the evening. You can see Rodan's sculpture emerging out of the fog. It's incredibly atmospheric. There's a reason Rodan chose these photographs to represent this series and it's because of this painterly effect. In 1908, he's there using a paintbrush and that's really exciting.

[00:04:46]Lastly, we're looking at the data from the XRF which essentially gives us the elemental breakdown of what the image is made out of. XRF is X-ray fluoresence.

[00:04:57]It's a process that aims radiation at the object and excites the electrons. It gives us uh quantities of each element in the periodic table. But in this case, we're really looking at um metals. Here we see all the different elements that were identified from calcium, chromium, iron, lead. For us, the most important peak is this green one, CR, which is chromium. The XRF is basically telling us uh it detected levels of chromium.

[00:05:27]The chromium is what makes the photograph possible. And this tells us that this is a gumd chromate print.

[00:05:38]The X-ray fluoresence, the visual analysis, the analysis under handheld UV, all these point to the fact that this is a gum dromate process, >> which means this styen is inarguably rare, is authentic, and is worth in excess of a million dollars. There are only two other known examples of this photograph in this large, commanding size. Both of those prints are direct carbon prints, which makes this gum bicromate print, the last in private hands, even more rare. This photograph is exactly what I thought it was. And armed with all of this research, with all of this information, I cannot be more excited than to bring it to auction this spring.