Photography is no longer seen as painting’s poor relation. The rise in popularity of limited-edition prints has created a buoyant market ­ but you can still get a Penn for a fraction of the cost of a Picasso

IN 1975, PHOTOGRAPHER Eric Meola did a shoot for an album cover. Two years ago he delved into his archive, recovered 700 negatives, chose 35 of the best and offered them up for sale as limited editions. The subject of the shots was Bruce Springsteen, the album was Born To Run, and the picture that made the album cover was released as a limited edition of 50, of which 47 have been sold to date. And the price of that picture has risen, in less than two years, from about £3,000 to £30,000. Not bad for an afternoon’s spring cleaning.

Photography is now considered to be as valid an art form as painting, albeit one with much lower prices. Genny Janvrin, of the auction house Phillips de Pury states: "People started collecting photography towards the end of the 1970s when Sotheby’s held the fi rst ever photography auction. But it is over the last fi ve years that the worldwide market has grown substantially."

Phillips de Pury now holds three auctions a year. Janvrin continues: "Collectors are looking both at contemporary photographs and those from the past; pictures that were, for example, a news shot or a cover for Vogue, rather than something that had originally been designed to put in a frame. And photography is an important medium. A picture by Irving Penn will now cost more than £200,000, but Penn is considered to be the Picasso of the photography world ­ and you certainly can’t buy a Picasso painting for that."

Even the most expensive photograph ever sold, Untitled (Cowboy) by Richard Prince, which went for over $1m (£486,000) at Christie’s New York in 2005, pales into insignifi cance next to the $72.8m (£35.4m) paid for a Mark Rothko in New York earlier this year.

Collecting photography divides into a number of sub-genres, probably the most accessible being that which Guy White, of the Birmingham-based Snap Galleries, specialises in. He sells photographs of musicians dating from the 1950s to the present day ­ including Meola’s Springsteen photographs.

"For collectors like me, it’s all about the subject matter," he states. "It connects you to a particular musician. For example, perhaps you owned a particular Bob Dylan album when you were younger. If you see an exclusive, limited-edition, museum-quality photograph that was used as the cover, then you’re going to fall in love with it and put it on your wall."

The most popular subjects, according to White, are currently The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix (it’s no coincidence that the people with the money to buy these pictures were young in the 1960s), although he is now seeing a rising interest in the late 1970s, specifi cally punk and new wave. Most of these pictures come in limited editions, once up to as much as 250, but now more likely to be runs of 15 to 25, with the price going up with each picture sold. That is why the price of the Springsteen picture made such a huge jump: at the beginning of the run there were 50 images available; now there are only three.

Enthusiasts should note that photographs of Paul Weller, taken over 30 years ago by Lawrence Watson, are shortly to be released. Naturally everyone involved is hoping that the Weller pictures will prove as popular as Meola’s Springsteen photographs. Iconic rock images are only one aspect of collecting photography. Another way is to attend art school shows and snap up new work while the prices are relatively low: from £200 to £4,000 at the most recent Royal College of Art show. And here, the subject matter will be very different.

"At the RCA, the subject matter is more abstract than it has been for a very long time," says Nigel Rolfe, a senior tutor in fi ne art and curator at the Royal College. "There is a lot of single tone work, as well as grey, black and white abstract pictures. In recent years, the Young British Artists have been known as brash: this shows YBAs have better manners now."

This is photography at its most intellectual and it is signifi cant that its buyers are also those who are likely to be interested in design. (Incidentally, collectors tend to go for either painting or photography, but rarely both.) These are pictures created by and for people with a sophisticated knowledge of art history, with the subject matter, as Rolfe puts it, "self-sealed and well mannered." To create and understand this needs a very deft touch.

A third category of collecting photography can be summed up as reportage. This does not just mean war zones: it could be anything that was once current and newsworthy, up to and including those Vogue covers. Phillips de Pury recently held its inaugural photography auction in London and one of its star lots was a picture of Lisa Fonssagrives- Penn in a Harlequin dress, shot by Irving Penn. Estimated to be worth between £50,000 to £70,000, it actually sold for £204,000.

Nor does the distinction between colour and black and white exist much anymore. Older photographs by the likes of Man Ray are more likely to be in black and white because those were the only materials available, but in this digital age, the wherewithal to make silver gelatin prints is beginning to disappear. Perhaps the best advice when it comes to collecting photographs comes from Genny Janvrin. "Buy what you love," she says. "After all, it’s going to be hanging on your wall."