Memoria © Yolanda Andrade
Eager to impress on its return to the Grand Palais, Europe’s biggest photography fair is expanding, seeking expertise from outside curators and art institutions
After Olympic fencers and taekwondo athletes marked the reopening of the Grand Palais this summer, attention now turns to Paris Photo in November, an opportunity to experience the historic venue before its official relaunch in 2025. There is an air of excitement – a “festive” feeling, according to artistic director Anna Planas – but also anticipation among the organisers, as section additions and expansions provide logistic and curatorial challenges across the four-day event.
The return to the Grand Palais will signal a new layout for Paris Photo, which has been held at the smaller Grand Palais Éphémère during the three-year conversion of the historic exhibition hall. This year, hosting displays on the first floor will allow visitors to look down on large swathes of the Principal (main) section, which occupies the famous ground-floor nave, Planas explains, relaying her excitement at “the sensation of circulation” the tiered system will bring. Eight stairways and elevators will provide access to the upper level, which will host the Éditions publisher section, a new educational programme, talks, and the fair’s collection exhibition. Most notably, the revamped Émergence section – formerly called Curiosa, and expanded to 23 projects from 16 – will also be separated from the ranks of established and blue-chip galleries downstairs.
“Voices will foster a better understanding of the visual languages in photography today”
Planas has personally curated Émergence, stressing that whereas Curiosa took ‘emerging’ to mean the age of the galleries, this new title is more open and artist-led. The work of Hélène Amouzou will be shown by Carole Kvasnevski, a debut presentation for the Parisian gallery, while Vuyo Mabheka, a 2024 BJP One to Watch, will present his project reflecting on Johannesburg townships. London’s Antony Cairns will be shown by Paris’ Intervalle, and Planas also highlights Jonathan Llense and Karla Hidalgo Voleau, artists who straddle the line between photography and fashion, an angle the fair is keen on promoting. Xiaoxiao Xu, whose emigration from Qingtian to the Netherlands informs her portraiture, is being shown by Madé van Krimpen. Émergence is a microcosm of Paris Photo’s aims under her leadership, Planas says, the question of “how to expand a fair dedicated to the medium of photography” while pursuing diversity of generations, geography and form.
A new installation-focused section within Principal will allow for this diversity of approach while providing focal points outside the confines of gallery booths. Titled Prismes, it will include arguably the fair’s most heavyweight attraction, a presentation of August Sander’s People of the 20th Century – the first time the roughly 600 prints have been shown in Europe in their entirety. Nearby will be Anton Kusters’ The Blue Skies Project, a Polaroid installation of over 1000 sky images made above Nazi concentration camps, with the GPS coordinates and estimated tally of victims on each. Aglaia Konrad’s architecture-inspired images will also be on show, while David de Beyter presents a video installation. And in one of several crossovers with this year’s Venice Biennale, Roberto Huarcaya’s large-scale photograms of palm trees in the Peruvian Amazon will be installed, just two weeks before his Peruvian Pavilion exhibition concludes in Venice.
Beyond providing for the culturally attuned French public, Paris Photo caters to scores of art-world VIPs and corporate backers. This year the VIPs will enter the Grand Palais through the new Voices section, located in what was formerly the MiniPalais restaurant. Voices hands control to three international curators who will each select between three and five galleries. Azu Nwagbogu, the founding director of LagosPhoto Festival (flying high from his curation of the Benin Pavilion at the Venice Biennale) will present his Liberated Bodies group – “artists who reactivate the archive by transforming either existing archive or their own personal archive to tell stories,” he writes.
Sonia Voss will spotlight the Lithuanian photo scene, and FotoMéxico founder Elena Navarro will select new Latin American artists, continuing her ambassadorial work which has seen her recommend galleries from the region in recent years. “Voices will foster a better understanding of the visual languages in photography today,” Planas explains, suggesting individual artists will benefit from being shown among a narrower group of peers.
Returning upstairs, the aforementioned Éditions publisher section hosts its new educational programme in conjunction with Institut pour la photographie, the Musée de l’Elysée and others. One event will be a research-based exhibition of photography books for young people, with activities for kids too. The neighbouring talks programme confirms the upstairs venue as more interactive and “dynamic”, Planas says, with a restaurant and the return of the vintage book showcase. Meanwhile, the Elles × Paris Photo initiative is introducing four grants for galleries showcasing women artists, both historic and emerging. The curator this year is Raphaëlle Stopin, director of the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie, who will draw a curated path through the Grand Palais to highlight women artists.
The volume and institutional weight of the Principal section still dominates. Among the big-hitters this year, Pace will join with Galerie Thomas Zander and Steidl to continue its celebration of the 100-year anniversary of Robert Frank’s birth, following its presentation of The Americans at Art Basel. (Aperture is also re-releasing Frank’s iconic photobook in the autumn). And more than 180 museum groups will visit the Grand Palais, underlining the fair’s attractiveness to acquisition boards who are increasingly adding photography to their collections. It is yet further proof, Planas says, “that Paris Photo is the main rendezvous – the main appointment – for photography today.”
