GUEST: Well, I bought it at a Seattle estate.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: It caught my eye because it kind of looked like a person, the face.
APPRAISER: The photographer, Imogen Cunningham, was born in Oregon, but actually moved to Seattle, where she became a photographer after working with Edward Curtis.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: So she had really excellent training and hung out a shingle as a portrait photographer.
So I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said that this really feels like a person.
This is a picture that was done very early in her career.
She was born in the late 19th century.
We would date this picture circa 1910.
Later on, she became a fine art photographer.
Do you have any sense of what it might be worth?
GUEST: No, I paid five dollars.
(chuckles) APPRAISER: Five dollars, good price.
Uh, it's a lovely platinum print, a technique that Cunningham studied very seriously.
And a value would be in the $2,000 to $3,000 range.
GUEST: Wow.
That's surprising.