Largest Book of Photographs Sold for £330,000

The largest book of photographs ever published has recently been sold at Bonhams’ Book, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs sale. This piece, almost resembling an atlas, was purchased for the incredible sum of £330,000 or $519,000. The final amount paid for it was actually more than 5 times bigger than the estimated price, somewhere between £50,000 and £70,000.

There was quite some fuss related to this book on the occasion of the auction, as many rich entrepreneurs have bid for it. It includes 20 images of Egypt, Jerusalem and Sinai, all of them measuring a whopping 30 x 21 inches (77 x 55 cm). Francis Frith was the fellow who took the photos, during his trip through the Middle East, in 1856. Mr. Frith had had to carry a huge load of large cameras with him in order to be able to shoot big photos like these, which, worth mentioning, are not enlarged.

In addition, he had to take some very dangerous chemicals and a mobile dark room with him, all of them required for the process of developing. Two years later, in 1858, the book was published, as a collection of images from the Middle East, with texts signed Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Stuart. These individuals were in fact Mr. Frith’s friends.

The book sold for £330,000 on the 12^th of June was the copy that went to London.

[LuxeDB]