This selection of fresh works made only in 2022 and 2023 was drawn from the booths at Paris Photo 2023. For further background on how and why this “collection” was formed, and the structure of the resulting slideshow, visit the introductory page (here).
This collection consists of 20 works, all made in just the past two years. In addition, there are 7 works from this same two-year period in the Black photographers collection (here), 2 works in the alternative processes and techniques collection (here), and 2 works in the Asian photography collection (here), thereby adding nearly a dozen notable works to the very recent contemporary pile, with new works by Edward Burtynsky, Mitch Epstein, Paul Kooiker, and others left standing when the music stopped. Given the quoted prices for these individual works (in various currencies), the approximate aggregate cost of acquiring this entire “collection” (not including the recent works in other collections) would be $365000.
Webber Gallery (here): Gently curled toes provide a tender foil to the precisely observed textures of denim and ribbed white cotton in this 2023 image by the Swiss photographer Senta Simond. The pose has the sense of an understated reveal, like a protective pulling in glimpsed only fleetingly. Priced at €7500.
Gallery Luisotti (here): This towering pile of craggy, crackled obsidian was documented in 2023 by Ron Jude as part of his earlier series “12 Hz”. Seemingly molded and sculpted by unseen hands, its geological presence defies our current short term thinking, our eyes drawn to the immensity of its implacable textures. Priced at $10000.
Webber Gallery (here): Fragmented flags tumble and burn in this gridded work by the British artist Theo Simpson. Drawing imagery from various protests, riots, and the January 6th attack on the Capitol, the collaged work simmers with chaotic tinted impressions arranged with rigor, the screen printed rectangles backed by a rolled steel chassis. Priced at €22000.
Stevenson (here): A fluttery tangle of light blue strands is echoed by Viviane Sassen’s detailed brushwork in this hybrid overpainted effort from 2023. Her insistent markings surround the strings, blotting out any photographic context and turning the composition into an elegant intermingling of surfaces. Priced at €24000.
Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire (here): In the past decade, many of Todd Hido’s photographs have been seen through the distortions of a car windshield, adding a watery impressionistic blur to views of lonely winter roads and muted grey landscapes. This new image continues with that approach, but with a more subtle sense of optimism, as evidenced by the sparkling circular flares of light dappling this winter scene. Priced at €10500.
Dot Fiftyone Gallery (here): Anastasia Samoylova’s recent project/photobook “Image Cities” uses the large billboards and advertising wall coverings found in urban settings as a backdrop for complex compositional juxtaposition. Here a passing man in a suit seems to be playfully spied on by the two men above (all three of whom are wearing glasses and dapper outfits), the foreground and background brought into unlikely visual dialogue. Priced at $9000.
Galerie Thomas Zander (here): This set of 36 prints by Tarrah Krajnak finds the artist iteratively taking on various “women’s poses”, channeling different artists, images, and performances with simply her body and the shutter release. She struts, vamps, hides, and tries on dozens of different personas and moods, each moment a re-imagined echo of a woman in the past. Her “RePose” project has taken shape as long duration performances, a portfolio of prints, and most recently, a photobook published by Fw:Books. Priced at €76000.
Ncontemporary (here): Erin O’Keefe’s tabletop still lifes always feature an element of inspired visual illusionism, but this new work has a particular flair for pleasing confusion. Up close, some of the artist’s painting trickery can be seen, but from a few steps back, the flattening eye of the camera collapses the distance and erases the surfaces, creating the appearance of yellow ribbons floating in space. Priced at €17000.
Ryan Lee Gallery (here): This 2023 print comes from Stephanie Syjuco’s series “Block Out the Sun” which originally took form as a video installation and image stills. The artist’s hands interrupt archival photographic documentation of a Filipino village re-created for the 1904 World’s Fair, preventing us from consuming the ethnographic imagery and upending the stereotypes such imagery continues to represent. Priced at $8000.
Persons Projects (here): This 2023 image by the Finnish photographer Eeva Karhu turns a large scale winter scene into a blizzard of digital collage. Her single composition superimposes an entire season of images into one frame, collapsing months of time into an instant. Up close, the work is dazzlingly dense with impressionistic fragments and marks, a winter pathway through the trees seen breaking down into fluttering sparks of color. Priced at €9500.
Parrotta Contemporary Art (here): These three diptychs by Yann Mingard come from his recent series “Indociles”. In each pairing, a delicately attentive photograph of an invasive plant is matched with a color field representing the heavy metal found in the particular soil in which that plant thrives. The works offer a view into the subtleties of changing/worsening environmental conditions, and the plants that are adapting to our new world. Diptychs priced at €7000 each.
Louise Alexander (here)/Fellowship (here): While this new work by Laurie Simmons is certainly aesthetically reminiscent of her previous photographic efforts with dolls, domestic settings, and carefully staged interiors, this image was made not with a camera but with the text-to-image AI tool DALL-E. The modeled skirt and hair of the woman seem almost like a digital version of papier-mâché, while other features and details in the picture have the eerie smoothness and strange incomprehensibility we have come to associate with AI. Priced at €9000.
Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (here): Not many contemporary photographers are interested in exploring the tactile qualities available in Fresson prints, but this 2023 work by Julien Mignot smartly leverages the strengths of the process. The work captures an eight hour exposure from a fixed seaside location in France, the seeping flare of the light slowly washing across the water. Priced at €3800.
Kuckei + Kuckei (here): Even after more than two decades of work, Barbara Probst’s multi-camera synchronicities continue to feel fresh and unexpected. In this New York City rooftop scene from 2023, we seem to follow the model’s eyes in opposite directions, with the bird’s eye view capturing a tiny self-portrait of the artist at work. The spatial dynamics in Probst’s works are complex and sophisticated, like single moment visual puzzles that can be solved again and again. Priced at €24000.
Galerie Tanit (here): Glamour and destruction intersect in this recent image by Rania Matar. Made in a dry swimming pool at a Long Beach resort in Beirut destroyed during the ongoing Lebanese civil war, the deep blue tilework is matched by the scattered rubble, with the woman’s calm presence perhaps offering a sense of resilience and healing. Priced at €5000.
Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain (here): This richly tonal work by the Mexican photographer Alejandra Laviada continues her exploration of sculptural objects built to be photographed. Seen from the side, the angles and geometries of her construction are flattened out into one plane, and the heliogravure process she has chosen further amplifies the textural richness of the surfaces. Priced at €6500.
The Photographers’ Gallery (here): This booth was a solo presentation of Vasantha Yogananthan’s “Mystery Street” project, which is now on view in New York at the ICP. This image follows a young boy from New Orleans as he is engrossed by his findings in the street, the floating leaves and reflected light creating an entire world in the gutter. Priced at €6000.
Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (here): Michael Wesely has consistently been interested in the possibilities of long duration photographic exposures, with some of his city and architectural images capturing the passing action over an entire year. His still lifes of bouquets of tulips, like this image from 2022, are done with relatively shorter exposures of just a week, the stems slowly drooping and the petals falling as the days pass. The resulting blurred images document the entire process, creating a graceful sense of motion. Priced at €15000.
Alexander Levy Gallery (here): Photographic documentation of the war in Ukraine wasn’t as prominent at this year’s fair as I might have expected, so this striking image by Fabian Knecht of the collapsed Desna River bridge certainly stood out. Knecht is likely best known for his white cube isolations built in nature, but this picture is seen with a similar kind of strictness of construction, with nature divided by a strip of rubble and rebar. Priced at €9800.
Magnum Gallery (here): This 2023 triptych by the South African photographer Mikhael Subotzky used transparent strips of tape to deconstruct and reconstruct a pair of images. Photographs of an upside down jacaranda tree and a man named Hermanus flank the central image, which is built from parts of each of its neighbors, weaving man and nature together like a basket. The process is innovatively unexpected, with compelling aesthetic possibilities for merging images. Priced at €64100.
