Ryan Van Velzer

The Republic | azcentral.com

The world's most expensive photo depicts Arizona's Antelope Canyon, near Page on the Navajo Reservation.

Landscape Photographer Peter Lik sold his print, titled "Phantom," for $6.5 million to a private collector in November.

The black-and-white photo depicts an underground cavern inside Arizona's Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon formed as rainwater eroded the stone into narrow passageways.

The canyon, first opened to the public in 1997, attracts photographers and sightseers to marvel at its uniquely smooth, flowing corridors and arches, Navajo Nation parks officials said.

"Certain textures and contours found in nature lend themselves beautifully to black and white photography," Lik said in a press release. "The intensity of contrasting light and dark spaces was surprising, but made for some of the most powerful images I've ever created."

Guardian columnist Jonathon Jones was quick to call the photo "derivative, sentimental in its studied romanticism, and consequently in very poor taste."

Jones said the photo is beautiful in a "slick way" that is a better fit for a "posh hotel" than the annals of art history.

But Lik and his "Phantom" will continue to haunt art history for some time seeing as how Lik now holds four of the top 20 spots for most expensive photographs ever sold, according to Lik's website.

Lik sold "Phantom" along with two other prints, "Illusion" for $2.4 million and "Eternal Moods" for 1.1 million.