master art P
aris Photo marked its 15th exhibition with a change of venue, to the Grand Palais for the first time. This seemingly ideal building has undergone extensive refurbishment over the past decade, and was absolutely beautiful in November sunshine, filled with natural light. My shot with the silhouetted visi- tors, right, was grabbed on my iPhone.
As a newcomer to the event,
it’s striking how prevalent ad- vertising for it was throughout the city; underlining a desire to consume art that you rarely encounter even in Britain’s cities where the billboards and flyers push the easily digested fayre of big-budget musicals and trite comedy.
As if to push this point, on the Saturday we attended, the queue lines were truly astoud- ing – extending around the Grand Palais and corralled with the metal gates more usually employed to keep unruly fans in line at rock concerts, the throngs eager to gain entry forming a stark contast with the carefully managed numbers within. There, we found room to breathe… and breathing in the works is clearly the aim, rather than flooding the spacious and beautiful building with packed crowds. Paris Photo focuses on a specific region – for 2011, Africa – for their featured material, though ultimately it is an art trade fair, and the galleries and publishers are setting out their stalls to creatives and consum- ers alike. The spotlight gave four African gallieres – Bailey Sieppel and Gallery Momo of Johan- nesburg, and Goodman Gallery and Stevenson of Cape town. They had a chance to promote their featured artists to a wider audience, as well as providing a platform for the curators of the biennial Recontres de Bamako’s showcase of new African talent. The grassroots feel is natu- rally from a point of perception, as this is the big time, the Brits
MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 10
photography
Richard Kilpatrick reports from the 2011 Paris Photo show – devoted to fine art prints, books, and the gallery world
The Grand Palais venue, and (above) viewing part of the ‘Polaroid is Dead’ exhibit.
or Mojos rather than some grubby fanzine in a forgotten record shop; however, if you are not already a keen connoisseur of the collectible image, there is so much that fails to reach the wider marketplace. I person- ally enjoyed discovering many new books that may well be well known to those of a more artistic bent… the asking prices suggest so, when they do come up on the second-reader market. Largely composed of
individual galleries, the works moved well beyond pure pho- tography – with 3D, sculpture and multimedia alongside fine art and traditional print. A lot of this seems to be more aimed
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