Fotonet
Reviews
Photo London
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May 31 – June 3 2007 What must not be forgotten regarding Photo London is that it is really for collectors who wish to buy the work and the galleries who need to display their artists, and what is wrong with that?, We need to raise the appreciation of photography as an important creative medium in this country and an international photography art fair, like Photo London, is one way of doing this. This is the first year that Reed Expositions, of Paris Photo, have promoted and managed Photo London and the first time the newly refurbished Old Billingsgate Fish Market has been used as the venue. The venue is not in the usual patch for art fairs and the entrance fee was £15 plus £20 for the catalogue. The best thing about the venue itself, was the terrace on the riverfront where you could relax and look at the view. Inside,the layout was simple and not too large; downstairs the stands for galleries, magazines and bookshops and upstairs “On View” a special exhibition of contemporary British photography and a talks area. The six British artists selected were Don McCullin, Tom Woods, Paul Graham, Simon Norfolk, Corinne Day and Julia Fullerton-Batten. The surprising element was the balance of fewer large established international galleries and more new smaller ones. There were new small galleries to the photo fair world who do not specialise in photography, for example, Zebra Projects and The Approach from London, Flatland from Utrecht, Martin Asbaek Project from Copenhagen and RX Galerie, Paris. As for the photography – it looked much the same as Paris Photo but only contemporary work exhibited, although the restriction of post 1970 was not very strictly kept to. Common to art fairs, most stands were a jumble giving little credit to the individual artists. However, spotted amongst this jumble to give an idea of the variety on display, were works by Seydou Keita and Malik Sidibe from Mail, Susan Derges, Norman Parkinson, Philip Jones Griffiths, Erwin Olaf and Richard Billingham. |
There were some lesser known artists who stood out – Simon Roberts whose large project “Motherland” records his year’s tour of Russia which has also been published by Chris Boot; Ryan Weidman, the New York cab driver and photographer who takes black and white photos of his passengers sometimes including his own face out of focus; Saul Leiter again from new York, who took beautiful colour photographs of the streets in the 50’s including a very cool still life of a shirt displayed in a window. - Anna Malagrida from Spain whose work “Point of View” 2006 is a life size image of dusty glass screens which people have scrawled on with a blurred landscape seen behind printed on totally matt paper. Which is very refreshing after all the ubiquitous high gloss. www.parisphoto.fr Susie Medley |
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