Since 1996 Paris has been the world capital of photography every November. Then the biggest European fair for photographic art takes place here, as also from 14th - 17th November 2013.
This year's trade fair took place again at the Grand Palais in the Avenue Winston Churchil in the center of Paris. Located near the River Seine and not far from the Place de la Concorde, the Palais was completed in 1900 for the World Exposition and has dimensions. Nevertheless, no square meter remained unused. The number of exhibitors from more than 30 nations rose again in 2013: 136 galleries and 28 publishers found their way to the French capital. Among the galleries were Gagosian, Howard Greenberg and Camera Work as well as a series of smaller galleries, which took place for the first time at the fair in 2013. Among the publishers was Taschen-Verlag from Cologne with the oversized book "Genesis" by the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, who described his large-scale nature pictures as his "Love Letter to our planet".
The number of visitors may have been even greater than in previous years. Who bought tickets at the day bank had to accept partial waiting times of over 30 minutes.
In addition to the main exhibition there were also special exhibitions from the collection of the American bank JPMorgan Chase from New York, the Folkwang Museum in Essen and parts of the collection of the Hamburg collector Harald Falckenberg, whose collection in Hamburg is shown in the old Phoenix factory and the Deichtorhallen. Apart from paintings and installations by Daniel Richter and Martin Kippenberger, the exhibits also include photographs by Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander and Richard Prince.
For the past two years, two more photo festivals have been developed: "Photofever" at the Caroussel de Louvre and"Photo Off" in the outer district near the Gambetta metro station. At Fotofever more than 50 smaller and medium galleries took part. Here, too, there was a pleasing variety, but with slightly less highlights than at the Paris Photo. A visit is also worthwhile here, especially since the proximity to the Paris photo is given (30 minutes walk) and you can see pictures without crowds. While you should work at ParisPhoto about 4 hours, you get good at Photofever with 1.5 hours.
The third, youngest and smallest photofestival taking place at the same time is "Photo Off". While "Paris Photo" and "Fotofever" showed both young as well as established photography, the focus of Photo Off is clearly on young art. Here the smaller formats dominated in simpler form with partly more extreme representations than in the other festivals. The visit takes you out of the city center to a former factory near the metro station Gambetta. The factory is today a cultural center and pub with an alternative flair, the possibility of a bar visit in the same building and has the longest opening times of the three photo festivals (until 22.30h). The needed time for a visit is less than one hour.
"Paris Photo" (https://www.parisphoto.com) and the side festivals are unique in their combination to see the range of photographic art in twoNovember days and to meet other photo enthusiasts.
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