Like the other half dozen Athenian views in the sale, the 71/2in x 91/2in
(20 x 24cm) whole-plate daguerreotype was taken in 1842, making them the earliest surviving photographs of Greece. It was bought over the telephone by the sale’s principal purchaser, who carried off around half the entire auction, underbid by New York dealer Hans Kraus.
£500,000 daguerreotype sets new record for photograph
London’s main photograph auctions took place last week. The high point of the series came at Christie’s on May 20 in a single-owner evening auction of daguerreotypes by the French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, when this image of the Temple of Olympian Zeus on the Acropolis sold for £500,000, reckoned by the auctioneers to be a new auction high for a photograph.
