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Sent 1: PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTING gains new stature as prices rise.
Sent 2: Price records are being set at auctions this week.
Sent 3: At Christie's, a folio of 21 prints from Alfred Stieglitz's "Equivalents" series sold for $396,000, a single-lot record.
Sent 4: Other works also have been exceeding price estimates.
Sent 5: In part, prices reflect development of a market structure based on such variables as the number of prints.
Sent 6: This information used to be poorly documented and largely anecdotal, says Beth Gates-Warren of Sotheby's.
Sent 7: "There is finally some sort of sense in the market," she says.
Sent 8: Corporations and museums are among the serious buyers, giving greater market stability, says Robert Persky of the Photograph Collector.
Sent 9: "When I see prints going into the hands of institutions, I know they aren't going to come back on the market."
Sent 10: Most in demand: classic photographs by masters such as Stieglitz and Man Ray.
Sent 11: But much contemporary work is also fetching "a great deal of money," says Miles Barth of the International Center of Photography.