Andreas Gursky, a German visual artist, created Rhein II in 1999 as a color photograph. Under a cloudy sky, a river (the Lower Rhine) flows horizontally across the field of vision, between flat green fields. The artist used computer editing to remove extraneous elements such as dog walkers and a factory building. A print was auctioned off for $4.3 million (then £2.7 million) in 2011, making it the most expensive photograph ever sold.

The photograph was created as the second (and largest) in a series of six representing the Rhine. The Lower Rhine flows horizontally across the scene, between flat green fields, under an overcast sky. It was shot near Düsseldorf, where Gursky had previously photographed in 1996.

On November 8, 2011, the collector sold the print at Christie's New York for an estimated $2.5–3.5 million. It actually sold for $4,338,500 (about £2.7m at the time); the buyer's identity has not been revealed.

Tate, a British network of art museums, purchased Gursky's fifth print of the photograph in 2000, which is identical but slightly smaller at 156.4 cm 308.3 cm (61.6 in 121.4 in). It is still in their collection but is not on display. Another print of the same size can be found at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, although it is not in a public exhibit.

Artist: Andreas Gursky

Price: $4.3 million

Cindy Sherman, an American visual artist, created Untitled #96 in 1981. It is part of her Centerfold series of 12 images. A print was auctioned for US$3.89 million on May 11, 2011, the highest price paid for a photographic print at the time, though the price has since been surpassed. On May 8, 2012, another print was sold at Christie's New York for $2,882,500.

The artist is depicted in the portrait as a young teenage girl with short blonde hair, resting on a linoleum floor, wearing an orange sweater and a short skirt, clutching a scrap of newspaper. Cindy Sherman elaborated on the composition: "I was thinking of a young girl who may have been cleaning the kitchen for her mother and who ripped something out of the newspaper, something asking 'Are you lonely?' or 'Do you want to be friends?' or 'Do you want to go on a vacation?' She's cleaning the floor, she rips this out and she's thinking about it".

As one of the most expensive photographs ever sold, Untitled #96 is available in prints at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Artist: Cindy Sherman
Price: $3.9 million

The next on our list literally is a photograph made by two-man named Gilbert and George. Their known name for all intents and purposes is Proesch for Gilbert and for George basically is Passmore. Artists Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore, known as the collaborative art duo Gilbert & George, have made an outstanding photography career by taking photos themed on various topics around the world and society, which is quite significant.

This two-man generally is the key of collaborating on the said photo name For Her Majesty, which they dedicated it by the Majesty of the place of Monarchy state. The duo team up specifically is the said most awesome unite of the two experts of photography. As one of the most expensive photographs ever sold, For Her Majesty was taken and made in the year 1973 and it particularly was sold for $3,765,276 in an auction in Christie’s London.

Artist: Gilbert and George

Price: $3.7 million

Jeff Wall created the photograph Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986) in 1992. Its dimensions are 229.2 by 417.2 cm.

This photograph is a sample of one of Wall's complicated productions, which includes cast, sets, crews, and digital postproduction. The staged shot represents the aftermath of a fake Mujahideen attack on a Soviet Army patrol near Mogor during the Soviet-Afghan War in the winter of 1986. The setting is a desolate desert. The thirteen Soviet soldiers are seen rising from the dead, their wounds and limbs still apparent from the horrific strike. They act strangely; for example, one of them reveals his scars to another. Three of the Mujahideen who killed them are pictured at the site, one studying the contents of a bag and the legs of two others shown with the dead troops' gathered rifles and ammunition.

Wall was influenced by war photography as well as 19th-century painting by artists such as Francisco Goya, namely the print series The Disasters of War, Antoine Gros, Théodore Géricault, and Édouard Castres' panorama of the French withdrawal during the Franco-Prussian War. The picture was made over a six-year period on a set in a makeshift studio in Burnaby, British Columbia. Wall designed all of the composition's intricacies, such as the soldiers' placement on the scene, their clothing, and their wounds.

As of 2020, the painting is Wall's most valuable, having sold for $3,666,500 at Christie's in New York on May 8, 2012. A copy of this photograph is on display at The Broad in Los Angeles.

Artist: Jeff Wall

Price: $3.7 million

In the mid-1970s, Prince was an aspiring painter who made a job by clipping articles from magazines for Time-Life Inc. staff writers. The artist began rephotographing these ubiquitous pictures, both attracted and horrified by them, utilizing a range of tactics (such as blurring, cropping, and enlarging) to accentuate their initial artifice. In doing so, Prince weakened the pictures' apparent naturalness and inevitability, showing them as hallucinogenic fictions of society's aspirations.

Untitled (Cowboy) is a pinnacle in the artist's continuing deconstruction of an American archetype as old as the first trailblazers and as current as then-outgoing President Ronald Reagan. The portrait of Prince is a copy (the photograph) of a copy (the advertising) of a myth (the cowboy). This lone ranger, perpetually departing into the sunset, is also a convincing stand-in for the artist himself, endlessly chasing the meaning behind surfaces. Untitled (Cowboy), created towards the end of a decade devoted to materialism and illusion, is, in the broadest sense, a meditation on a whole culture's continuous desire for spectacle over lived experience.

Artist: Richard Prince

Price: $3.4 million

Andreas Gursky's 2001 work 99 Cent II Diptychon is a two-part color photograph produced in 1999, hence the piece is frequently referred to as "99 cent.1999."

99 Cent II, one of the most expensive photographs ever sold, represents the interior of a supermarket, complete with various aisles of merchandise. To reduce perspective, the piece has been digitally manipulated. The snapshot is a chromogenic color print, sometimes known as a c-print. It's a triptych. Six sets were created and put on acrylic glass. The photos are 2.07 by 3.37 meters (6.8 feet 11.1 feet) in size.

When it was auctioned at Sotheby's on February 7, 2007, for US$3.34 million, the work became known as the most expensive image in the world. A second print sold for $2.25 million at auction in New York in May 2006, and a third print sold for $2.48 million in November 2006 at a New York gallery.

Artist: Andreas Gursky

Price: $3.3 million

Andreas Gursky's photography is notable for its critical perspective on the consequences of capitalism and globalization on everyday life. Andreas began with small-scale black-and-white prints, but since the 1990s, he has been interested in tourism and commercial places, making works that reflect today's overpowering high-tech industries and worldwide markets. His works range from black and white images in newspapers to full-color landscape works, presenting a diversity of styles and scales that make his work, particularly appealing to critics and the general public.

Andreas Gursky's Los Angeles, executed in 1998, made multiple top 5, top 10, and top 15 lists of the most expensive photographs ever sold in auctions. When standing in front of this immense vista, the viewer is swept away by Gursky's depiction of Los Angeles. The horizon almost mimics the curvature of the Earth and is one of Andreas Gursky's greatest examples, measuring over three and a half meters in width. In true Gursky fashion, the window to current life provides a picture of the Los Angeles environment devoid of extraneous details.

He used a large-format view camera to focus on the crucial aspects of the Los Angeles skyline, creating an idealized composition of the city known for its fast-paced lifestyle. Los Angeles was sold for $2,931,890 at Sotheby's London in 2008.

Artist: Andreas Gursky

Price: $2.9 million

Edward Steichen's The Pond—Moonlight (also known as The Pond—Moonrise) is a pictorialist photograph. The shot was taken in 1904 near the home of his friend, art critic Charles Caffin, in Mamaroneck, New York. The image depicts a forest across a pond, with a portion of the moon visible over the horizon through a gap in the trees. The Pond—Moonlight is an early photograph taken by manually adding light-sensitive gums, resulting in the final print of more than one color.

Only three known versions of The Pond—Moonlight are still in existence, and each is unique because of the hand-layering of the gums. Steichen donated one version to the Museum of Modern Art, which now houses it under the title Moonrise, Mamaroneck, New York. A second version was in Alfred Stieglitz's personal collection and was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1933. This was published in Alfred Stieglitz's photography publication Camera Work, No. 14. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased the Gilman Paper Company Collection and chose to auction it off, it obtained a duplicate.

This print of the photograph sold for US$2.9 million in February 2006, the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction. The photograph was purchased on behalf of a private buyer by gallerist Peter MacGill. The print's high sale price is due, in part, to its one-of-a-kind nature and scarcity.

Artist: Edward Steichen

Price: $2.9 million

Cindy Sherman, an American visual artist, created Untitled #153 in 1985. A print was auctioned off for $2.7 million in 2010, making it one of the most expensive pictures ever sold.

The photograph was inspired by a request from the magazine Vanity Fair to create a series of photographs inspired by fairy tales. The images were never published by the magazine, yet they are among her best and most characteristic works. They are more gloomy and horrific than the sources from which they are said to have drawn inspiration, and are not directly influenced by anyone's fairy tale.

The current image is a self-portrait, as is typical of the artist, displaying a lady lying on the ground as a corpse, coated in mud in what appears to be a natural environment.

The photograph is on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City.

Artist: Cindy Sherman

Price: $2.7 million

The photo of an unknown name photographer is on our first list of the most costly photos in the mark of history. The name of the photos was obtained from the individual in the photo, Billy the Kid, who was also known by his real identity, William H. Bonney.

On Saturday night, the only authenticated portrait of iconic Wild West gunslinger Billy the Kid was auctioned off to Florida billionaire William Koch for $2.3 million. Koch, an oil industry executive and well-known collector of art and American West antiques, made the winning bid in front of a surprised audience at Brian Lebel's annual Old West Auction in Denver.

The photograph, which was taken outside a saloon in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in late 1879 or early 1880, shows the criminal grasping the upright barrel of a Winchester rifle and a Colt 45 pistol strapped to his hip.

Billy the Kid was possessed by the relatives of Dan Dedrick, who received it from his cattle rustler companion, "Billy the Kid." The Kid, born Henry McCarty but known as William Bonney in New Mexico, was shot dead at the age of 22 by lawman Pat Garrett in 1881, months after a jailbreak in which Bonney allegedly killed two deputies. Billy the Kid has been portrayed, to varying degrees of authenticity, in a slew of popular culture films and books in the 130 years since his death.

Artist: unknown

Price: $2.3 million