Paris Photo, between photography, fashion and surrealism

The annual edition of Paris Photo, at the crossroads of photography, fashion, fine arts and luxury, began last Wednesday at the Grand Palais.

Perfectly organized, the event covers different themes: portraiture, neo-realism, war reporting, fantasy, eroticism and above all surrealism, this year marking the centenary of the movement that transformed Art and photography.

On Wednesday, however, the atmosphere was not festive, with most artists openly saying they were disappointed with the result of the elections in the United States, once again crowning a president clearly hostile to LGBTQ+ communities. But visitors were also happy to immerse themselves in this bubble of art and photography isolated from the rest of reality, awaiting an uncertain future.

There is no shortage of major sponsors, such as Ruinart and BMW, who award their own prizes. And Paris Photo also includes numerous presentations from luxury brands and publishing houses. Some manage to combine both aspects, like Louis Vuitton, with a large bookstore on the upper floor of its store presenting its “City Guides”, including recent copies like Alasdair McLellan's vision of the Scottish Highlands, but also classics like Slim Aaron's shots showing la dolce vita in the Italian Riviera.

Four galleries from Budapest are participating in this edition of Paris Photo. The capital of Hungary has become that of the “illiberal democracy” of its authoritarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, who has kept the country under his thumb for more than ten years and maintains a friendship with Donald Trump.

“Now the Americans will see what it's like to live with this kind of regime,” comments Tomas Opitz, the Venezuelan-Hungarian director of the Tobe gallery in Budapest, laconically.

Her gallery features a trio of artists working on dislocation and adaptation to different cultures in youth and life. Juan Brenner, a Guatemalan photographer, worked for Vogue and L'Officiel in New York at the start of his career but currently produces personal work centered on his origins, translated into portraits of young people or by This Universe, a hypnotizing film image printed in pigment ink of a freight train in a remote Scottish valley.

Upstairs, one can admire a brilliant solo exhibition by Dorottya Vékony for Lontermhandstand, another Hungarian gallery. Cut-out, half-undressed female silhouettes in black and white appear to float in the glass frames. Multifaceted, the artist also presents a giant sculpture of life-scale photos of cut-out human characters, enveloped in each other in a sort of headless orgy. Surrealist eroticism at its best.

At a time when autocrats are seizing on puritanism and attacking supposed Western decadence to better divide people, the nude images taken in Los Angeles in the 1960s by John Kayser are worth seeing. At the time when he worked for an aeronautical company, he produced a series of color nudes, made more transgressive thanks to the juxtaposition with incongruous objects: tea sets, wooden stools or stuffed toys.

Works by photographers known for their fashion shots abound: an image by David LaChapelle showing a shark devouring a superb pair of legs in a bloody New England sea or a dreamlike photo by Steven Klein of a naked model and a racehorse swimming together in a pool. Various works by Patrick Demarchelier are also visible, such as a silver nitrate print of a noble lion's head or a nude by Christy Turlington, arms crossed on her chest with a white mouse perched on her shoulder. An ideal image to decorate any modernist-style living room, for which you will still have to pay a whopping $72,500.

Various magazine images should also delight the public, such as Arthur Elgort's very successful photo showing a very young Kate Moss stroking the trunk of an elephant in Nepal, taken for Vogue Great Britain. Strangely, the In Camera gallery has chosen not to reveal that Koto Bolofo's excellent black and white photograph of an explosion of youth and dandies from the South African townships in 1997 had been commissioned by Vogue Hommes International. I am well placed to know: at the time, I was the editor-in-chief of the publication that commissioned the creation of the image.

Koto Bolofo is also the subject of an exhibition at Dover Street Market this week, in the Marais. It must be said that photography is in the spotlight throughout the capital. Galerie Dior recently launched its tribute to one of the leaders of fashion photography, Peter Lindbergh. And if Paris Photo will close its doors on Sunday evening, Peter Lindbergh's retrospective will still be on view until May 4 at Galerie Dior.

In the portrait category, the Contemporary Art gallery in Cologne is showing a beautiful selection created by Timm Rautert of artists such as Gerhard Richter and Olafur Eliasson, and the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Unmissable is Hiroshi Sugimoto's giant self-portrait, next to a mysterious shot of Mount Fuji, printed on washi paper, usually used for origami. Ironically, the Republican election victory places the only Republican party in the world led by climate skeptics at the head of the world's leading economic power. Mount Fuji recently experienced a new snowfall after spending its longest period without new snowfall since data collection began 130 years ago.

But you don't necessarily have to be millions rich to acquire beautiful photos. A Louise Dahl-Wolfe image of Coco Chanel in her Paris apartment is tagged at $5,000, while an image of an innocent Audrey Hepburn on a bicycle with her dog Famous at Paramount Studios, shot by Six Avery, is worth “only “$11,000. Both works are presented by the Staley Wise gallery. 12 x 8 centimeter photos show astonishing black and white images of New York in the middle of a snowstorm, for amounts ranging from five to ten thousand euros; they are signed by the “photographer of photographers”, the great Saul Leiter.

The curious can also admire historical images, such as a marvelous shot of the Rialto in Venice dating from 1876. Taken at dawn by Carlo Nava, it is completely free of any human presence. An image of Notre Dame made by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1860 reveals buildings that no longer exist today.

Given the terrible violence that has marked recent years, war photography has a special place in the exhibition. A report by Robert Capa in 1948 shows an Israeli government ambulance under fire, the year the country was founded. Taken from the US Army archives, images dating from 1957 show strange colors of fascinating and disturbing beauty, resulting from nuclear bomb tests in the Nevada desert. Gilles Caron's images of conflict zones are both harsh and shocking, such as those of the Battle of the Bogside in 1969 or a modern silver nitrate print of his legendary image of an Ibo fighter, carrying six rockets on his head during the Biafran civil war.

We are still in Paris, which means that book signings are legion. Large stands present rare editions of beautiful photography books, from Man Ray and Weegee. In the Conversations section, the public is invited to attend round tables, the most anticipated being that of Jim Jarmusch, the famous independent director, guest of honor of the event.