We at Arizona Highways believe Arizona's landscapes are priceless. But a photograph of one of those landscapes just fetched a very high price.
Peter Lik's Phantom (pictured), a black-and-white photo made at Antelope Canyon near Page, has sold for a whopping $6.5 million, the photographer announced last week. Phantom is actually a black-and-white version of a color photo Lik made at the canyon.
The sale price is a world record; the previous highest sale price for a photograph was for Rhein II, an Andreas Gursky photo that depicts the River Rhine in Germany. That photo was auctioned for $4.3 million in 2011.
“Certain textures and contours found in nature lend themselves beautifully to black and white photography,” Lik said in a press release announcing the sale. “The intensity of contrasting light and dark spaces was surprising but made for some of the most powerful images I’ve ever created.”
A private collector bought the photo in November. The collector also purchased two other Lik photos for a combined $3.5 million, making a total sale of $10 million. The sale gives Lik four spots on the list of the 20 most expensive photographs ever sold.
According to the Austalian-born Lik's blog, the American Southwest is among his favorite places to shoot.