I've been back from Paris a week and am now going to finish my coverage of Paris Photo, the yearly festival of art photography that shows work from close to 200 galleries from all over the world.

This year the show had a large book section and an active schedule of authors signing their new books.

BIG was definitely an  important characteristic at the show.

This nude was probably 8 feet tall. Here'a close up showing what looks like film grain:

A large print I liked very much:

by Hiroshi Sugimoto at 47 x 83 inches in an edition of 5 at Pace/MacGill Gallery. I saw this many times, where the edition size was limited to 5.

You can see from the dots on the label that these were very popular, at  $7800 each,

by Martin Schoeller of the artist Jeff Koons and another of Michael Douglas, 

proving that portraits of celebrities is still a big draw. I find that a little discouraging.

And another of Kate Moss, which was quite striking:

by Jean-Baptiste Huynh selling for 18,600 Euros in an edition of 7. It was about 6 feet square.

Joel Meyerwitz signing one of his books.

I liked both of these

And finally, in a back area of Pace/MacGill's booth, were four Harry Callahans, not attracting a lot of attention, clearly placed there for people to see that the gallery still represented his work:

I would think that if you were collecting 20th century American photographers, you'd have to seriously consider at least having a few of Harry's pictures.

This concludes my coverage of the Paris Photo show. An amazing thing to go to and to experience. I recommend it highly. Plus, being in Paris isn't so bad either.

See you there next year!

I've been back from Europe and Paris Photo a little less than a week and it is time to move into the festival and show what was there that I liked, and perhaps a few I didn't.

Note: I will attribute the works where I can.

Day one I spent walking endlessly around,  quickly overwhelmed by the sheer size and scale of the show. At one point I stopped, got an overpriced sandwich and sat on the steps and told myself to focus, Neal, make some sense out of this.

Overall impressions: Much good work. A great deal of work striving to be seen, noticed, purchased. Major parts of photography neglected, missed or not deemed worthy. At times, the back story was important, such as in David Graham's work:

Graham uses America as his canvas and is from England. Each photograph is a symbol of larger issues brought about by his research and his study of, well, us.

These are by local artist Nick Nixon of his wife's sisters over 40 years. Perhaps you saw the same work on view at the Boston Museum of Fine arts last year. I studied the interest in these. It was steady and people were really looking. These prints were larger than the MFA ones and were the centerpiece of what the gallery was showing. Sales? I saw no red dots but this could be just because the gallery chose not to show them. Would you buy just one of these? Buy one at time seeking to obtain all them?And then this issue of an artist being known for something he/she did as a sort of yearly sideline interests me. I am sure Nick has mixed feeling about this work. I wonder if he would have rather been represented at Paris Photo with some of his other work?

This marble quarry picture illustrates how things reappear.  Although quite lovely it certainly isn't anything new. I was doing these in 8 x 10 in the early nineties from marble quarries in northern Italy and Ed Burtansky practically established his  career with the ones he did of  the quarries in Barre, VT. This one's by Pannos Kokinas.

While some galleries showed very large pieces there were other efforts to show work that would impress from a distance such as this gallery showing grids of photographs.

Arno Minkkinen had a couple of very nice pieces:

Notice that when I took this the first day, the left smaller piece had sold and the larger more iconic image by Arno had not. Arno was there at the show.

This photograph seemed to be positioned to be seen as a blockbuster and it was impressive but also left me a little underwhelmed:

It probably was about 80 inches across.

Stephen Shore's work was there:

Looking solid and Richard Misrach, looking very unimpressive in small prints:

This got me thinking that perhaps the public's appetite for the new is voracious and galleries don't think that by showing established artists they will do as well. Maybe someone like Misrach is already represented everywhere.

I found these fascinating:

and

which weren't made so much by the photographer as "reassembled" using NASA pictures from satellite views of the Grand Canyon. They were a little cold feeling and by a German photographer.

You'd think these French gallery guys would want to engage with the public a little more:

And this was telling: older dude, presumably with the fat checkbook, there with his young lover or possibly daughter choosing which one they wanted to buy.

Finally, for this post, we'll finish with these which were a little bizarre but fun to look at and see how the artist worked:

They have the characteristic of an artist run amok with the cloning tool in Photoshop

The show for me? Overwhelming, frustrating, enjoyable, educational, informative,  helpful (as an artist), made me angry, made me laugh, made me proud to be a photographer, impressive, depressing. Go again? Absolutely. 

Next post will finish my review of Paris Photo 2014.

It's been a few days since you've heard from me.  I was at Paris Photo at the Grand Palaise in Paris for three days.

I've only been home for a few hours after a day and night of planes and airports that scrambled my mind but I will post this quick one to get us started. Over the next several days the posts here will be about Paris Photo.

First of all: Paris Photo is a mind blower! More contemporary photography in one place than I have ever seen and a real game changer in terms of understanding what is hot and what is not. Paris Photo tests the world wide market for photography and puts work right up there to be sold. I can report here that interest in photography is huge, probably at an all time high. Remarkable and completely overwhelming. Do not try to assimilate Paris Photo in just one day. Finally,  while easy to get numb and dismissive of much bad work, there was simply stunning work at the show too. I left encouraged for the medium and awed at the beauty and brilliance of some of the work. No longer does photography look new or cutting edge, for the medium as an expressive form has entered into a maturity and parity with other visual arts that is impressive and not to be ignored. Walking endlessly through the show for two days, I left proud to call myself a photographer.

Innovations

If you go to Paris Photo and to AIPAD (Association of Independent Photography Art Dealers) in Manhattan each spring there always are a few artists showing trying to move photography forward. 

The way the show is organized each gallery has a booth or a display  space. These are galleries from all over the world. Paris Photo gives you a unique  take on contemporary art photography on an international scale. 

The only moving image photograph I saw at Paris Photo was this one at Pace MacGill Gallery:

which was three vertical video screens butted together that combined stills (the scene) with a video running in a loop of the figures moving. It was quite beautiful. It was about 70 inches across and was by Michael Rovner.

Another effort at innovation was this one with cut out figures in a plexiglass box made in an effort to provide actual three dimensionality to the piece:

And finally, this one isn't really "innovative" but it uses contemporary tools in a way that is exciting and quite amazing:

(sorry for reflection) by Andrew Moore at Yancy Richardson Gallery and going for a cool $28,000. This is a low angle aerial, I thought most likely from a helicopter, but the gallery wasn't sure, thinking  it was from a crop duster. Whatever, it was 78 inches across and called "Yellow Porch". I thought it was wonderful. This one, although it was very large and therefore not something you could take using a GoPro camera, forecasts some of the future of photography with more imagery now beginning to come from the use of drones. I predict quick saturation of aerial landscape work (both urban and rural) in the next few years. Take note: we will see more aerial work in the art market as well.  

Next up? More of Paris Photo 2014. Stay tuned.