The Gert Elfering collection at Christie’s & Weston at Sotheby’s

Michel Comte’s 1993 photograph of Carla Bruni: $91,000.
Irving Penn’s 1996 photograph of Kate Moss: $97,000.
Avedon’s 1968 photograph of Lauren Hutton: $127,000.
Avedon’s 1959 photograph photo of Brigitte Bardot: $181,000.
Irving Penn’s 1999 photograph of Gisele Bundchen: $193,000

Having a curiously titillating sought-after collection of nudes in contemporary photography: priceless no more!

Oh, and: David LaChapelle’s 1994 colour photograph of “Naomi Campbell: Have You Seen Me?”: a mere $29,800. However, earlier this week, Sotheby’s auctioned an Edward Weston nude photograph of his spouse, Charis, which sold for $325,000! That’s still more than the highest-selling image form the Elfering collection: Helmut Newton’s Sie Kommen, which sold for $241,000.

Despite all this interesting math, Carla Bruni is on everyone’s lips. Fact: Bruni’s photograph cost half the value of a photo of frozen vegetables, at the same auction and from the same collection. True, they’re not just any frozen vegetables: they’re styled by Irving Penn, and the cover of his book: Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000. Still, frozen vegetables sold for more! Don’t get me wrong, Carla Bruni is a beautiful woman. But the media blitz about this photograph is just silly…