The fair was staged this year from March 30-April 2 and the full rosta of sales followed after.
Phillips was first out of the blocks with three sessions totalling 346 lots held over two days on April 3-4.
Sotheby’s held a single sale on April 5 plus an online auction and Christie’s offered two sales: a select 63-lot auction of John M Bransten photographs and a larger mixedowner group including property sold to benefit the Elton John Aids foundation on April 6.
Nude print
Topping the auction list was Edward Weston’s Nude of 1925.
This palladium print of one of his trademark abstracted figure forms led Christie’s Bransten Collection on $720,000 (£580,645).
Sotheby’s top-priced lot was an album of 49 albumen prints taken by Timothy O’Sullivan and William Bell featuring landscapes; geological and other features of the Western Territory of the US.
They were created as part of a series of government-sponsored surveys conducted west of the 100th meridian between 1871-73.
A number of these bound albums were produced for government departments – this one belonged to the Library of Congress until 1970.
It ended up selling for $300,000 (£241,935), the low end of its $300,000-500,000 estimate.
Two of Phillips’ sales – a select evening auction and a day session –comprised photos that were formerly in the collection of Howard Stein and offered from the Joy of Giving Something Foundation.
These produced a number of notable results for work by early 19th century photographers among them a new auction record for the work of Victorian pioneer Benjamin Brecknell Turner.
His 11 x 15in (28 x 38cm) 1853 albumen print of trees in Pepperharrow Park, one of his classic views of rural England, realised $130,000 (£104,840) or $162,500 inc premium.
This beats the previous high $137,000 inc premium set three years ago at Sotheby’s for his Hedgerow trees, Worcestershire, of 1852, another work from the Joy of Giving Something Foundation The top price of Phillips series was the $240,000 (£193,550) paid for Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1977 Tulips, a composition of two gelatin silver prints.
£1 = $1.24
