Paris Photo 2007 (Mini review with pictures)

Just got back from Photo Paris 2007. Overall it was another great show, the organisers, Reed did a really good job staging this large exhibition.

Apart from Eurostar hitting something just before entering the channel tunnel on the way back from Paris to London, resulting in a five hour delay, the journey too Paris was comfortable and uneventful and took a speedy two and a quarter hours from the shiny new St Pancreas Terminal


I took a number of photos of those booths and prints that really sparked my interest as well as some of the people I met. There was lots of new work aswell as old, so any person interested in photography would find some to take away from this excellent event.

Michael Smith & Paula Chamlee


Had a good chat with Mike and his wife Paula, really nice people and their Azo prints are simply stunning. Bought one of Paula's books on Tuscany. ( Ian I remembered to say hi to them for you, they thought your work was excellent and really enjoyed working with you at their workshop a month ago)

http://www.michaelandpaula.com


Hamiltons Gallery

Had a short chat with the gallery manager of Hamiltons, a really pleasant chap called Charlie Fellowes. The booth was one of the nicest at Photo Paris. Was lucky enough to get an invite to their private view this Wednesday of Irving Penn’s work, will write up on blog.


What mainly sparked my interest at Hamiltons was a set of 10 photogravures of Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower prints, I believe they were around 50x40 cm and were made in 1984. A truly stunning set of prints that will no doubt rise in value, the asking price for the set was £150,000 Euros, below shows all of the set together.


I went away from the Hamiltons booth really inspired as I have just started to experiment with photogravure

http://www.hamiltonsgallery.com/

Camera Work

Cram packed full of prints by all sorts of photographers including, Helmet Newton, Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh to name a few, quite a bit of eye candy!


They also had one of my favourite prints by Irving Penn of his wife.


www.camerawork.de

Howard Greenberg

This booth had a nice set of prints by the late Arnold Newman as well some other prints that I cant remember, no Kenro Izu prints again this year, I really don’t know why they leave his prints at home in the U.S as they are simply stunning.


http://www.howardgreenberg.com/

Robert Klein Gallery

This gallery had a good assortment of prints by the masters of photography including Stiglitz, Sudek, Steichen

Edward Steichen (Asking price £950,000 Euros)


Alfred Stiglitz


Josef Sudek

Individual Artists work worth a mention

Paolo Roversi

Some stunningly beautiful polaroid nude portraits by Paolo Roversi, 10x8 inches £10,000 Euros each, a few had sold at this price.


Duane Michael’s

A nice set of Michael’s silver prints


Masao Yamamoto



Bill Brandt ( I believe this is one of his prints, please someone correct me if I am wrong) a stunning silver print


Abelardo Morell



31 Studio

Although not present 31 studio (U.K platinum printmakers) had one of the largest platinum prints I have ever seen at Michael Hoppen stand. Looked almost like A1 size! I imagine a very expensive print to make!



General Shots of the exhibition


Overall I had an excellent time viewing the many prints on show. I left the show feeling very inspired, Highly recommended !

Really nice, one thing I have noticed lately is the wider use of wood frames and in white; noire.

Curt

Nice review and beautiful prints from the looks of it.... The blog is thru APUG?

I was there too!

I posted these remarks on the LF forum in a marginally related thread, so here is a slightly modified and expanded version for those who don't frequent that forum:

I have just spent the last two days at the Paris Photo exhibition, and it was an interesting experience. If one assumes that what is being shown at this agglomeration of dealers represents what is currently being consumed by the art-buying world, then I think the clear economic winner is Epson.

In short, if what was being shown is avant garde (and the organizers of the event clearly want to portray the event in that way), then the prevailing wisdom is:

'Print it big, print it in color, and mount it behind plexi'.

I did a surreptitious informal survey of the work that seemed to attract the more concentrated glots of people excitedly speaking French and using hand motions as a visual aid. And these concentrations occurred mostly around very large color prints that were as big as a wall in a small apartment.

Black and white silver gelatin photography seemed to be selling so long as the prints were vintage prints made by photographers now dead. More modern black and white silver gelatin work created by artists still able to breathe on their own seemed to create a noticeable void around them, as if someone had just released a noxious fume next to the photos.

Alt process prints such as platinum, cyanotype and photogravure were represented by a few smaller installations, and most of these were prints made by professional printers for already well-known photographers. There were three gum-bichromate pictures that I saw. The one exception Dave mentioned was a gallery with quite a few vintage prints from the late 1800's. Many were labeled as albumen, but I have a feeling that they were not albumen, but rather collodion prints, because there was none of the tell-tale yellowing of the highlights that is seen in vintage albumens.

This was a big exhibit, occupying the underground area under the southwest quarter of the Louvre, so I think it was a reasonable world-wide sample of what the art dealers regard as hip enough to sell. The dealers were from every continent and most of the countries with enough disposable income to spend on a flat piece of paper to tack to a living room wall.

And it appears to me that if one regards salability as the key figure of merit (a premise to which I don't subscribe, but hey), the classic F/64ish large-format black and white photographer should not expect to get a whole lotta respect in the current environment.

It appears to me that if you want some attention, and still keep the camera you have, then buy some color film and shoot urban shots from a high vantage point in the 'Where's Waldo' vein, or alternatively, shoot cringe-making photos of small girls and base yourself in a country without an extradition treaty and a very liberal attitude toward this subject matter. Another groovy subject is war ruins. Print any of these at say, four by six feet, and voila!.

Now to keep from sounding too cynical, I sort of get the whole impersonal landscape, 'Gee look, we live like ants' thing. Sure. Seems a little sophomorically PC, but okay. Same goes for the war zone pictures. Subtle criticism of the destructive power and senselessness of war and all that. That is a profound artistic-critical notion that had never occurred to me before, but you know, after seeing the pictures, I sort of am against the whole war thing myself. The kid pics just make me queasy. Sorry. Just don't get it, and I don't want to get it.

So that is the story from the front lines of current photo world, or at least the one that is being displayed here in the City of Lights. Straight or pictorial, digital or traditional? Those concepts were not on view here. It seems that pretty much whatever goes is okay, so long as it is big, in color and has an interesting hook or back story.

So there. Get busy. You now know what is needed. Good luck.

What an interesting thread, we have a perspective from two rather different but similar cultures, on something that interests almost all of us.

Many thanks to both of you for your informative comments and pictures.

Mick.

I just re-read my post, and it comes across as a little cynical. That was not my intention. I found the show very interesting and rewarding in the sense that it exposed me to a wide gamut of artistically-aimed photography that would be very difficult to get in such a concentrated area in such a short amount of time anywhere else. If anything, it demonstrated to the overwhelming breadth of artistic vision and realization that is possible today. It is a very big world. I think with today's tools, if it can me imagined, it can be created.

jovo said:

Thanks for your review. Far from being too cynical, I think you're spot on vis a vis what I think are similar themes in NYC. However.....and the reason I extracted what I did from your post....I think that by the time a 'trend' has been analyzed and articulated, it's already moved to the 'oh, that's so last year' group of wall fodder, and we should all await the next big thing. So...rather than jump on board such a fleetingly fickle, and silly aesthetic that burns out far too quickly because it's so damn insubstantial, stick with what your passion dictates. Make art that reflects the uniqueness of your own imagination....make it well....and you'll do as well as one reasonably can. (You should also expect to not be invited to parties at which super-models show up, so you can temper your all black wardrobe with a little of something else )

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Well said, John. Maybe if I wait long enough my small, 4x5 black and white contact prints of pond scum will become hip, too!

Shawn Dougherty said:

Well said, John. Maybe if I wait long enough my small, 4x5 black and white contact prints of pond scum will become hip, too!

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Shawn, I'll bet you a beer that that will happen! I hope I win!!

Wow! I'd call all that inspiring!! Thanks for taking and sharing the pics.

(Irving Penn's wife? I thought that was Grace Kelly. Very pretty image, and I love the man on stilts! And many others, obviously.)

Thanks to you both, Dave and Clay.

I think my time would be better spent making images I like than trying to make images for someone elses taste. However, I have the luxury of a day job. Looks like I will keep it.

jovo said:

Shawn, I'll bet you a beer that that will happen! I hope I win!!

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If it's an Irish stout I can't loose! Or maybe a nice porter... mmmm

Thanks guys for the review... it's nice to see what's hot.
-Rob