Edward Weston's stunning Nautilus Shell image is to be auctioned off in New York next month for an estimated price of between $300,000 and $500,000 – amazing when you consider that in 1927 the original price of the print was just $10, paid in monthly 50-cent installments. A good reason to start stocking up on original photographic prints...

Browse the auction's e-catalogue by clicking here.

PRESS RELEASE: On Tuesday 13 April 2010, Sotheby's New York will offer at auction a remarkable selection of Photographs that ranges from examples of some of the earliest photographs made in America, to masterpieces of the modernist aesthetic in photography and beyond. The 244 lot sale is estimated to fetch between $3.4/5.1 million.

The auction's top lot is Edward Weston's iconic study of a single Nautilus Shell ($300/500,000). This print was purchased in 1927, the year the picture was taken, at San Francisco's East West Galleries for $10 by a young photographer named Bernice Lovett. Unable to pay the entire cost of the photograph at once, Ms. Lovett paid for it in monthly 50-cent installments. The image has, in the intervening years, become one of Weston's most celebrated and is now regarded as one of the great modernist photographs of all time. The print offered by Sotheby's is the ideal early state of the image, on matte-surface photographic paper, affixed to a large mount that bears Weston's early penciled signature. This print has remained in the collection of Ms. Lovett's family since its original purchase over 80 years ago. It has never before appeared on the market.

Sotheby's.com