From buyable prints by Viviane Sassen and Senta Simond to book signings by Paul Kooiker and Lin Zhipeng, here are the highlights from this year’s edition
Paris and photography are a match made in heaven. After all, the former is the “City of Light”, while the latter is the language of light. Every November, the photo fanatics flock to France’s capital, and we’re certainly part of the crowd. Paris Photo, the greatest spectacle in photography, has settled into year three of its temporary home at the Grand Palais Éphémère, though don’t get too used to the thick T shape, as it will return to its birdcage of a home next year.
Here, we’ve sifted through the avalanche of photography to hand-pick what you can’t leave without.
Ren Hang, Untitled, 2012
Promising a now that will last forever is Ren Hang in this sublime print on sale at Stieglitz19. It features eight mouths plucking cherries from above, a scene of alternative behaviour that feels political in a symbolic way. Hang will always be a leading light: innocent, pure and free.
Senta Simond, Feet, 2023
The longer you gaze into Senta Simond’s subtle piece at Webber, the more you become utterly transfixed by its cryptic gesture. One feels only the Swiss artist could have made such a small moment so sacred, with its close crop, unmistakable tenderness and fascination for the feminine. It’s a mutual portrait, an exchange in which the artist and subject’s individualities blur, leaving their traces on the other.
Anna Atkins, Lycopodium (Ceylon), c. 1851–54
Pushing daintiness to the point where it becomes strangely abstract, this intoxicating cyanotype by Victorian botanist Anna Atkins really pops at the booth of Hans P Kraus, Jr. You’ve never seen blues like these: crisp and cerulean, they provide the backdrop to a weightless phantom floating before your eyes, teetering on the margins of visibility. Once upon a time, Atkins showed us a world worth discovering. Today, she shows us one worth saving.
Viviane Sassen, Barbe Bleue, 2023
Viviane Sassen fans: make a beeline for the booth Stevenson, where the Dutch artist is unveiling new works which whisper through the walls. There’s surely room for a Sassen in every collector’s portfolio, and you won’t have to break the bank with this enchanting view of closely dancing butterflies, whose beauty lies as much in its secrecy as in its surface appeal. Even in the smallest of frames, Sassen manifests photography at its highest.
Bruno V. Roels, Figura Serpentinata (Demeter III), 2023
Flirting with states of material and conceptual dissolution, the unsentimental art of Bruno V Roels is a real showstopper at FIFTY ONE. His tea-toned cactus is unrepentantly handsome, sinfully artificial and of such astonishing quality that you’ll have to hurry. You could have this print in any room that you use most frequently and never tire of it. It is worth at least 20 minutes of full concentration a day, for the rest of your life.
Book signings
Photo books are a fine compromise if the euros don’t stretch to a print, and there’s no shortage of printed matter at the fair. The jam-packed book signing schedule not only offers the opportunity to get your mini masterpieces signed by the artists themselves, but to also meet fellow bookworms. Highlights include:
- Lin Zhipeng, Mysterious Skin (Stieglitz19, A06, 9 November)
- Sophie Calle, Picalso & Erratum (Atelier EXB, SE09, 9 November)
- Marguerite Bornhauser, When Black is Burned (Carlos Carvalho, B13, 9 November)
- Manon Lanjouère, Les Particules (The Eyes, SE18, 9 November)
- Paul Kooiker, Fashion (Tegenboschvanvreden, A05, 9 November)
- Viviane Sassen, Phosphor (Stevenson, A16, 10 November)
- Rebekka Deubner, Strip (Jörg Brockmann, SC02, 10 November)
- Chloé Jafé, SAKASA (IBASHO, C02, 10 November)
- Nick Waplington, Comprehensive (Hamiltons, C22, 11 November)
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Daido Moriyama, Tights, 2011
There’s no better way to sign out than with a rummage through the hard-to-gets at Komiyama over at the books section. You might be spoiled for choice, but the pick of the bunch – and certainly one for the nightstand – is Tights by Daido Moriyama, who has quite frankly been on fire this year. It contains a collection of bedazzling shots of fishnets – nothing more, nothing less. Not far at Bookshop M, Moriyama’s photographs are printed on recycled toilet paper too. But alas, these rolls are not for sale. Here’s to the many lives of photography, the greatest medium in the world!
Paris Photo runs at the Grand Palais Éphémère until November 12.
