Paris Photo 202420 Images
Paris Photo, the photography world’s equivalent to the Oscars, has finally returned to the revamped Grand Palais, and there’s a festive feeling in the air. Beneath the iconic birdcage structure, dealers and galleries from all corners of the world have congregated to show off high-quality works from luminaries and new-world talents. It’s the usual cocktail of classic and contemporary, albeit with a clear edge on the latter. “Paris Photo has never occupied so much space!” artistic director Anna Planas says excitedly. “The new spaces of the Palais really offer an augmented experience of the fair and what photography means today.”
For the second year running, the fair’s ta-da moment comes at Christian Berst, whose cosy, curtained booth unveiling John Kayser is making a real splash. Some 70 pictures by the amateur erotic photographer are splayed across the walls, with the more provocative ones down the corridor. They show soft-focused, nude and semi-nude California girls who also star in short films playing on vintage TVs here. The whos, hows and whys will forever fuel the American’s secretive, homemade trove, which was discovered posthumously in 2007. Encountering Kayser’s infatuation with female beauty up close, you can’t help but try to piece together some kind of story – his fantasy meeting yours. And even though these photographs regurgitate the same kinky motifs – high heels, cocked hips, sitting – you can admire a technical skill that transcends any flea market find.
Japanese artists are well represented in this edition. At Écho 119, Sakiko Nomura’s atmospheric Träumerei makes its first outing outside of Japan, and it’s a hit. Pushing her work into dark and breathtakingly dream-bound places, Nomura instils a quiet sense of romanticism into her photographs, which are subsequently beautiful and cognitive in their own way. Meanwhile, a dazzling and hypnotic scene, Daisuke Yokota’s booth at Steiglitz19 stuns you like a punch in the face. Featuring trippy new sludge works as well as unseen images from older series, it maps out the evolution of this most enigmatic artist. Although Yokota carries the flame of Japan’s Provoke generation, he has crafted a very distinct aesthetic that feels at once contemporary and future-oriented, as also evidenced in his three unique solarisations that light up Jean-Kenta Gauthier. While you’re at it, very much worth a browse is Taka Ishii’s super selection of prints by Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama and Eikoh Hosoe, the legendary photographer who passed away in September.
At the stand of Suzanne Tarasieve, Mari Katayama joins forces with Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov to probe the complex relationship between performance and identity. In her self-portraits, Katayama poses with a chair, imitating caryatids, the female figures who act as support in classical architecture. By combining her body with prosthetics and sculpture – in turn freeing herself from the heavy hieratic chains – she raises questions about beauty ideals, body image and ableism. In his own absurd and outrageous way, Mikhailov also pursues liberation within the photographic frame in his I Am Not I series, made after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Spoofing the artist-genius trope, he opts for the anti-heroic court jester, exploring his physicality against a black curtain as he wields a sword and lobs a dildo.
From first to last, Camille Vivier’s booth is a blast. It’s a main attraction in the Emergence section upstairs, and boasts an arresting print of flexing female bodybuilder Tjiki Sidibe, which we’d hang pride and place above the master bed. Also embodying the subject-slash-object dynamic that fascinates Vivier are her pictures of nude models exploring the mad home of HR Giger, the mastermind behind the Alien aesthetic. Erotically tense and allegorically charged, these works are making waves, but don’t forget Vivier’s curvesome, chiaroscuro candles, whose stories are rooted in Afro-Brazilian cults and voodoo rituals.
If you want a break from the “look don’t touch” etiquette, check out the bustling books area, which seems to cough up more than ever. Photo books for children can be perused in a family-friendly installation, while Parisian bookshop Le Plac’Art Photo has a drool-worthy array of hard-to-find vintage gems for sale. There’s also a stellar line-up of contemporary publishers selling their wares amidst a busy signatures programme. Estelle Hanania is unveiling her rip-roaring book with choreographer Gisèle Vienne and actress Adèle Haenel, the special edition of Thomas Mailaender’s Les Belles Images comes with vintage press photos in ceramic frames, while you can expect queues at the tables of Nick Waplington and Martin Parr. The latter is launching the rudely titled No Smoking in response to Keir Starmer’s proposed ban, but “when in Paris…”, right?
Beyond the fair, the city is spilling over with photography. Polycopies has – as is now ritual – transformed the River Seine’s Concorde-Atlantique into a boat full of books, offering the opportunity to meet your favourite publishers and photographers and ask them your burning questions. As for exhibitions, LE BAL’s Yasuhiro Ishimoto survey is indeed a sight to behold, but the top-pick has to be the MEP’s Science/Fiction – A Non-History of Plants. Whipping up visions of the natural world from your Victorian photographer crush Anna Atkins, all the way through to contemporary artists catapulting the medium into the future, this increasingly mind-bending show reflects on environmental change, modernity, poetry and the imagination. It sometimes feels like a rocket ship to another planet entirely.
In case you haven’t heard already, it’s surrealism’s 100th birthday, and Paris is celebrating in style. Leaving visitors in states of frenzied awe is Pompidou’s blockbusting Surrealism show, which features a magic door and AI recreation of André Breton’s voice. Meanwhile, at theatres Reflet Médecis and MK2 Beaubourg, Jim Jarmusch, who’s been tapped as Paris Photo’s guest of honour, and his group SQÜRL are serving as a backing band to Man Ray. They’ve composed a semi-improvised score to the artist’s restored short films, and it’s a match made in heaven. There’s no shortage of exceptional surrealism back at the fair too. Somewhere on Edward Houk’s honorary wall, you’ll find fashion photography pioneer Erwin Blumenfeld’s portrait of a noblewoman, half painted, half photographed, with a pearl necklace that literally bulges out the frame. You have to see it to believe it.
Take a look in the gallery above for a closer look at the exhibitions and works on display. Paris Photo is running until November 10, 2024.
