Photo Courtesy Sotheby’s

The first photograph to sell for more than $3 million, Andreas Gurky’s 99 cent II, Diptych reached $3,340,456 at a Sotheby’s auction in London, February 2007. This was the third time the photograph had sold for more than $2 million. Another print of the same image was sold for $2.25 million in May, 2006, and yet another print had reached $2.48 million just six months later.

Interestingly, the record-breaking photograph was sold not at a photography auction, but at a sale of contemporary art. That might suggest that how an artwork is sold plays an important role in defining how much it can sell for.