With 40,000 visitors and more than 100 exhibitors Paris Photo is the most prestigious fair in the photography calendar. This year it focused on Japanese and East Europeans talents.
I had an wonderful time there, here is a quick snapshots of what I liked :
“Maquettes / Light #2602” 1995
Gelatin silver print, B&W transparency ,
UV filter, Light box
22.5x15cm
Naoya Hatakeyama's fantastic serie "Maquette/Light", a serie of twenty light boxes, which had been shown at Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, 2009 and was @ Sage Gallery
Ken Kitano @ MEM Gallery -
"Japanese photographer Ken Kitano has been making composite portraits of groups of people, layering image upon image until one common face and a rather ghostly body emerges." see more Ken Kitano
"The above photo, titled “Sense”, launched Tono Stano’s career as a photographer. The Slovakian photographer started out as an art photographer for film studios in the-then Czechoslovakia, and developed a new style of photography, deeply influenced by performance art.
“Sense” had since become Stano’s calling card. Taken in 1992, it also seems to have symbolized the re-emergence of the Eastern European photography from behind the Iron Curtain, stepping out from the shadows of darkness.
The image was bought by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios and they commissioned a similar photo as the poster for the film Showgirls (below right); it also appeared on the cover of the landmark photography book by William A. Ewing ”The Body” (below left). On its cover, the image was slightly cropped for to made it look more abstract)." Read more on Tono Stano
I had a crush on Wim Delvoye SexRay's work presented at Beaumont Public (Luxembourg)
Kiss 1
2001
100 x 125 cm
Cibachrome on Aluminium
It was great to see also works from Vivian Sassen whom I discovered last year at Paris Photo 2009
and I guess we will see more and more of her as she is one of the rising star of photography :
"Throughout Viviane Sassen’s work speaks a concern for the issue of the representation of Otherness, whether in the form of gender, physical ability or ethnicity. Since 2002 Viviane Sassen has been travelling to East and South Africa, photographing mainly young people. Her experiences lead her to reconsider her own image of Africa, which is reflected in the way she interacts with the ‘models’ with whom she stages her photographs." see Foam Magazine
and last but not least Gregory Crewdson, the famous American photographer known for elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.
http://www.faketheexhibition.com/
