PARIS.- Christie’s France has realised nearly €5M for this week’s Photographs auctions. On Thursday 9 November, the highly anticipated masterpiece by Man Ray was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder after a long bidding battle between 4 clients on the phone and 3 clients present in the room. This photograph, formerly in the collection of Jacques Doucet, portraying Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray’s muse and lover sold for €2,688,750/£2,373,124/$3,120,658, establishing a new auction record for a photograph by Man Ray, for any photograph sold in France and established a new world auction record for any classic photograph topping the previous record from 2006 for a print by Edward Steichen.

The Photographies sale which happened on Friday 10 November realised strong results for rare prints such as The Hand of Miles Davis by Irving Penn which sold for €199,500, doubling its presale estimate and for Làszló Moholy-Nagy’s Photogramme, Dessau which sold for €125,000.

Christie's also mentioned the strong results realised for Albert’s Skira’s collection totaling nearly €100,000.

Elodie Morel, Director of the department: “It has been a real honor to work with Thomas Koerfer for the sale of his collection. We are particularly proud of the exceptional result realised by Noire et Blanche, which established several new records. The sale offered other lots of high quality such as the Identical Twins by Diane Arbus which was sold for €547,500, and Reclining Nude on Dark Green by Paul Outerbridge which realised €102,500 after an active bidding battle. These exceptional results confirm once again the leadership of Christie’s Photograph department in selling high quality collections.”