First published by T Magazine on 12 November 2015, with photography
Beginning today, 147 galleries and 27 art-book dealers and publishers will gather in Paris’s enormous, glass-domed Grand Palais for Paris Photo, the world’s largest photography fair. With it come a slew of satellite events, including the independent publishing fair Offprint Paris, a Martin Scorsese exhibition at La Cinémathèque Française and the photographer Alex Prager’s first solo show in France at the Galerie Des Galeries. And inside Paris Photo itself, visitors often lose their bearings and entire days wandering among the endless rows of stalls. With that in mind, here are a few highlights from the fair.
Portraits in the Time of AIDS at the Salon d’Honneur
Rosalind Fox Solomon’s series documenting the lives of those affected by the AIDS crisis was first shown in 1988. This week, a selection of her powerful images will be on display as part of Paris Photo’s new “PRISMES” section, which features serial works from an international selection of remarkable photographers. In the Salon d’Honneur, visitors can also see “Sleeping Portraits” by Paul Graham, Bae Bien-U’s desert still lifes and Daido Moriyama’s unsettling street portraits of Japan.
Masahisa Fukase’s “Bukubuku” series at the Michael Hoppen Gallery
Never before exhibited outside of Japan, the postwar photographer’s bathtub self-portraits were taken over a two-month period in 1991 and published in his last-ever photobook. Bukubuku translates as “bubbling”; the images show Fukase in muddy black and white, half- or entirely submerged in water, playing with reflections and refractions of light. They’re by turns witty, melancholy and ominous; the series is photographic performance art at its most intimate. (It will also be shown at the Tate Modern in 2016.)
David Hurn’s 1960s at Magnum Photos
This year, Magnum exhibits a selection of older and modern prints, including images from the recent photobook “The 1960s: Photographed By David Hurn.” At 3 p.m. on Friday, Hurn will sign copies of the book, which intriguingly combines celebrated studio shots with documentary images of infamous events — from Sean Connery promoting “James Bond” to British police wrestling demonstrators during an anti-military rally.
The Art of the Photogram at Atlas Gallery
In a break from the more conventional photography on view this weekend, the Atlas Gallery has a selection of photograms: cameraless images created by laying an object on light-sensitive paper. Depending on the transparency and consistency of the object, the technique can produce a mysterious and alluring variety of effects, which are explored in the selection of images on view here. The results are fascinating, from Berenice Abbot’s 1950s wave patterns, to Floris Neusüss’s 1984 “Gewitterbild (Thunderstorm)” — for which he left photographic paper under foliage and waited for lightning to provide the exposure.
Paris Photo is on view through Nov. 15 at the Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris, parisphoto.com.