A mural-sized 1938 photograph by Ansel Adams, Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, sold for a record $722,500 US on Monday. (Ansel Adams/Sotheby's/Associated Press)

A two-day sale of photographs from the Polaroid Collection brought in $12.5 million US and set records for several photographers.

Nearly 90 per cent of the 1,200 photos on offer found buyers over the two days of the sale at Sotheby’s in New York.

New records were also set for other American photographers, among them Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Harry Callahan and David Hockney.

The highest price was the $722,500 paid on Monday for a mural-sized photograph, Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, by Ansel Adams.

Clearing Winter Storm was bought by the Alinder Gallery, a California specialist in Adams, known for his landscape and nature photography.

Adams, who died in 1984, who was a close friend of Polaroid founder Edwin Land and helped choose photos for the Polaroid Collection.

On Tuesday, the auction continued with strong prices for works by Adams, among them:

• Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, $104,500.
• Cedar Trees in Snow, Winter, Yosemite, $122,500.
• Winter Sunrise from Lone Pine, Calif. $40,625.

There was strong interest in images from Lucas Samaras, an experimental artist who worked with a large-format Polaroid. On Monday, his Ultra-Large (Hands) sold for $194,500, a record for the artist, and on Tuesday, many of his photos were selling for well over their asking price.

A photo by Robert Rauschenberg, a pop artist who also worked in photography, titled North Carolina (from the Bleacher series), sold for $116,500, well above its $30,000 estimate.

Other strong prices included:

• Ken Moody by Robert Mapplethorpe $13,750, twice its presale estimate.
• Selected images by Peter Beard, $31,250, three times the presale estimate.
• Selected images from American Beauties, by David Levinthal, $23,750, twice the presale estimate.
• Chicago (Trees in Snow), by Harry Callahan, $254,500.

The sale of the Polaroid Collection was ordered by a U.S. bankruptcy court in Minnesota when businessman Tom Petters, who controlled Polaroid Corp., was convicted in a Ponzi scheme. The Polaroid brand is now owned by PLR IP Holdings LLC.

With files from The Associated Press