Albert Watson and the $25,000 picture of Kate Moss

What Kate Moss calls one of the best photos ever taken of her has been sold to a mystery buyer at Bonhams in London for $25,000 (£16,250). Shot on a beach in Marrakech by fashion photographer Albert Watson, the shot was the result of a suggestion to get naked at the end of a shoot for German Vogue in 1993.

Albert Watson, Kate Moss (1993), Marrakech which has sold at Bonhams for $25,000

"We were photographing for about three hours in the morning, then in the early afternoon she said 'You know it's my 18th birthday today?' It was very sweet," Watson recalls in the video above.

Albert Watson, Kate Moss (1993), Marrakech

Over the past 35 years, the photographer's striking portraits have appeared on more than 250 Vogue covers worldwide and over 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine. The photographer, who has been blind in one eye since birth, studied graphic design at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee, Scotland and subsequently film and television at the Royal College of Art. After moving to Los Angeles in 1970 Watson received his first break a year later when he was introduced to an art director at Max Factor who offered him his first test session, from which the make-up brand purchased two images. 

Watson's baptism of fire into celebrity portraiture came when he was called upon to photograph Alfred Hitchcock for the 1973 Harper's Bazaar Christmas issue. "Very few people knew that he was a gourmet chef and he was giving the magazine his recipe for Christmas goose. They wanted to do the goose cooked on a plate and him holding it, but I thought it was funnier that he would hold a plucked goose." The photograph of the director holding a goose with a bow round its neck became one of Watson's most recognisable images.

Albert Watson, Alfred Hitchcock (1973), Los Angeles

He went on to create advertising campaigns and direct over 500 television commercials, using his background in graphic design to weave the genres of fashion, advertising and film together. In 2010, he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's lifetime achievement award, The Centenary Medal.

The photograph of Kate Moss, naked on a beach is one of the photographer's most popular images. In 2007, a large-format print of the image sold at Christie's in London for $108,000, five times its pre-sale estimate. Watson says of the image: "I still think these are among the best pictures ever taken of her. She said so as well."