As every fall, Paris Photo invites you to reconsider the view. Each work, each exhibition project, and each book proposes understanding photography not as an object of consumption, but as an ever-changing form of visual thinking. True to this regenerative impulse, the fair, now in its 28th edition, reexamines its ability to successfully reinvent itself, carving out a fertile territory where consecrated names and new voices intermingle, affirming photography as a process of continuous evolution, and seeing shades of the past integrated into dynamics that expand language and modes of expression.
At the entrance to the Grand Palais, the Poggi Gallery opens its 36-metre-wide walls to reveal the world’s turbulence with a selection of images taken over the past 40 years by French photographer Sophie Listelhuber, winner of the 2025 Hasselblad Prize. In a deliberate way, the artist gives order to chaos and avoids arranging images into compositions that condense the inheritance and tensions of our time.
From the past to the future: photography as an open process
“Video, sculpture or performance“Photography is an open medium whose history reimagines the fair at a time that foreshadows the future,” warns Artistic Director Anna Planas. As such, the spirit of experimentation that permeates the work of the media pioneers exhibited in the Hans P. Krauss Gallery is echoed throughout the fair. prismwill debut there this year Installation by Isabel Hurley and Marisa González at Malagueña Gallery. series Thermofax (1975-77), Created using thermal reproduction equipment, this book reveals the author’s early interest in the relationship between technology and artistic creation. It’s a collaborative work he commissioned from his partners at a Washington art studio that depicts the suffering of women being tortured in Pinochet’s Chilean prisons. “In 1971 I used the first color copier,” emphasizes the Vizcaina artist. “In Spain, it was the escuela de Bellas Artes that I studied in the past. I was interested in the future: incorporating photography, video, new generative systems. Photography was just a process in my work.”
Additional sale at Frankel Gallery Sleeves and covers (12 inch 9 pieces/No 50) Written by Christian Marclay (2025). From this work, the artist prints the covers of second-hand records, whose rips and scratches evoke tactile memories of sound and the passage of time. At Pace Gallery, Richard Learoyd’s Marchit Flowers, photographed in a dark, room-sized room with direct light on photographic paper, has been transformed into a poetic meditation on human frailty. Syrian multidisciplinary artist Huda Takriti presents sculptures created with textile impressions at Krone Gallery, while Stevenson and South African Guy Tillim intervene with pigment impressions with acrylic paint, adding a twist to his aesthetic exploration. The Jack Davison portrait at Cobb Gallery is small in size but exquisite.
Between reality and fiction
Tania Franco Klein and Carlos Idun Tawia approach the tension between reality and fiction from different perspectives as a way to explore humanity. At Rose Gallery, the Mexican photographer explores modern psychological pressures through carefully constructed, intensely colored scenes. “My project is conceptual. Self-portraits are functional and not about personal identity,” he warns. Idun Tawia transforms photographic archives into illuminating accounts of daily life in Accra. “My inspiration came from Senegalese cinema of the 60s,” explains the Garnes artist at the stand in Galeria Alta, where his work is on display. “I try to bring my subjects to life in the most natural way possible, letting them act freely within the scenes I construct for them. In doing so, I am able to preserve the truth of my memories through fictional narratives.”
Voices from around the world and familiar scenery
The focus of this year’s festival is voicea vibrant sector that brings together galleries for the first time, particularly from Asia and Eastern Europe, bringing new perspectives and geographies to the international stage. Supervised by Devika Singhi Nadine Wietlisbach, clearly express the surroundings Landscape and family ties. Among the most popular proposals, the unprecedented series by Justin Kurland stands out., Presented by Higher Pictures. A work by an American artist depicting the dead nature of a priest. collage carried out from the series nude of Lee Friedlander: A gesture of reclamation that challenges male tradition and rewrites authorship from a subversive voice. At Vadera Art, Hiwa villagey, With Indian photographer Gauri Gill, she has built an authentic architecture of resistance. It is a tribute to the invention and dignity of farmers in the face of agricultural deregulation that undermined their fragile way of life.
In the digital realm curated by Nina Roehrs, photography extends to creating images that interrogate our present. Nagel Draxler Gallery Contrasting Generational Approaches: Martha Rosler Presents In Public: Airport Seriesan ongoing project that looks at airports as spaces of transition in which forms of interaction, work, action, and control unfold. This research asks how capital, surveillance, and control constitute these environments. From 11-S onwards, texts reflecting increased fear and surveillance during travel were incorporated. Anna Ridler, on the other hand, approaches images from a technological perspective, using data, especially self-generated data, to create original narratives through tools such as digital media and automated learning, and explore medicine and measurement in relation to the natural world. Maya Funke, the gallery’s new media art director, warns: “Together, these exhibitions are a reflection of our times, showing how current technological tools influence our perception of reality, from analogue photography documenting the masses and the temporal, to the youngest generations reflected in public internet images.”
The Emergente sector on the balcony of the Grand Palais showcases 20 individual projects, including a focus on the work of British Louis Porter in the Chiquita Room. The project deals with distance between objects, ideas and people through three different series. Using photographs and other diverse sources, we transform scientific and educational materials found in libraries, archives, and the marketplace to reveal the paradox of modern segregation. At Camara Oscura Gallery, Claudia Fughetti addresses climate change through color interventions that reflect the survival of life and the tension between naturalness and artificiality. Spain’s participation in this year’s fair is made up of ADN, Alarcón Criado, Gregory Leroy – Nuevo Impulso, Hama Gallery, Nordes, Rocio Santa Cruz, Sorondo Projects, as well as several other galleries, and was completed by Editor: RM.
About The Author
