Booth by Booth Highlights from Paris Photo 2014, Part 3 of 5

While every section of our exhaustive Paris Photo roundup can be enjoyed on its own, for those that want to start at the beginning or who need some further background on how these slideshows are organized/constructed, the first segment of the survey can be found here. The second segment is here.

This section covers the area in the center of the fair, as seen from the entrance.

Edwynn Houk Gallery (here): For those enamored with gestural contemporary overpainting, Brassaï’s Transmutation portfolio (1935, reissued in 1967) should be on the required syllabus. His delicate and intricate markings transform a series of nudes into a topology of patterns. Individual prints priced at $40000.

Stevenson Gallery (here): A roadside pose turned into a mysteriously enveloping black shadow. Viviane Sassen, priced at €7000.

Galerie Karsten Greve (here): This booth was a solo show of Roger Ballen’s new Asylum of Birds work (accompanied by a Thames & Hudson book). This image introduces menacing flapping birds to Ballen’s inventive world of grubby figures and rough burlap drawings. Priced at €14700 in the large size.

Rolf Art (here): This image was one of a selection of vintage prints on view from Adriana Lestido’s powerful series on imprisoned women. Her gaze is bold and confrontational, set off by the tender tattoo on her arm. Priced at €12000.

Galerie Christophe Gaillard (here): This expressive abstraction was made from scratches on an Ektachrome negative; while the print is an enlarged scan, the actual negative is mounted on the back of the frame to ensure the work is unique. Priced at €5000.

Galerie Kamel Mennour (here): Open French doorways in an Algerian apartment, showing framed exterior scenes (from other buildings to a view of the souk) at different times of day. Marie Bovo, priced at €16000.

Fraenkel Gallery (here): Nicholas Nixon’s entire Brown Sisters series, hung edge to edge in the larger 20×24 size (made since 2006). Dominating an entire wall in the central aisle of the fair, it is a staggeringly engrossing time lapse installation. I was told it was only for sale to a museum or institution, with no quoted price.

Galerie Nathalie Obadia (here): A swarm of small images, from photobooth portraits all with hands included in some way, to evocative magazine fragments and black rectangles. Lorna Simpson, priced at $95000.

Peter Freeman, Inc. (here): This booth was a solo show of the work of Eric Poitevin. Still like objects of death (skulls, a bloodied deer, birds on strings) are matched with images of nature and nudes. The print was priced at €4700.

Daniel Blau Ltd. (here): An angled overhead view of 1930s Wall Street, with pedestrians turned into dots. Margaret Bourke-White, priced at €6500.

Gallery Thomas Zander (here): This 1971 grid of doorways by Anthony Hernandez was another favorite from the fair; the array of modern prints comes with an additional single print of the door closed. Priced at $45000, with apparently several sold to museums in one day.

Galerie Kicken Berlin (here): An early Otto Steinert photogram from 1947 (before the Subjective Photography group got started), full of overlapped circular forms and shadows. Priced at €28000.

Galerie Daniel Templon (here): This is the very first joint artwork made by Pierre et Gilles (from 1977), using themselves as models, adorned with brightly colored graphic paint and stickers, and placed in a custom frame. Priced at €80000.

Hamiltons Gallery (here): This iconic Mapplethorpe poppy from 1988 is no longer a surprise to most. But my reason for highlighting it is that I wanted to get a read on the current retail price for such a classic floral image. The answer – a lofty $300000.

Galerie Alain Gutharc (here): Sliced negatives merged into single images, creating hybrid male/female forms with a hint of sly humor. Joachim Schmid, from a set of 32 works, priced at €5400.

Toluca Fine Art/Editions (here): A complex view through a cracked windshield, with a rear view mirror reflection and suction cup signage. A single image from a triptych by Paolo Gasparini, priced at €7000.

Guido Costa Projects (here): Early Nan Goldin (still in black and white), taken at The Other Side in Boston in 1974. Priced at €25000.

Howard Greenberg Gallery (here): One of František Drtikol’s more layered compositions, with arcing geometric forms, cast shadows, and the eyes of a nude peering out from the darkness. Priced at €112000.

Galerie Susanne Zander (here): These found photographs (a set of 23 prints from 1969/1970) chronicle an affair between Günter K. and his secretary Margret. As part of a larger booth theme of voyeurism, they capture a knowingly frank exchange, where Margret (and her bouffant hair) are always being watched. Priced at €1800 each.

Martin Asbæk Gallery (here): Brightly colored sunbeam photograms made by Nicolai Howalt, using the 19th century lenses and apparatus of Nobel laureate Niels Ryberg Finsen. Priced at €2000 each.

Gallery Luisotti (here): Wires, frames, mirrors, and cut arcs turned into satisfyingly hard edged photographic abstraction. Barbara Kasten from the early 1980s, priced at $10300.

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): A jittering piece part self portrait made of heat transferred photocopies on fabric, forty years ahead of the recent assemblage/rephotography craze. Keith Smith from 1972, priced at $45000.

Taka Ishii Gallery (here): A recent stroke left Nobuyoshi Araki with blindness in one eye; his new series Love on the Left Side (in platinum) pairs diptychs of crisp imagery with amorphous blurs. Priced at $11000.

Yossi Milo Gallery (here): This is the largest work by Alison Rossiter that I’ve seen – an array of four 20×24 sheets, matched into a single elegant composition of abstract black, white, and intermediate grey. Priced at $35000.

Farideh Cadot Associés (here): A split second time dilation between frames, allowing a silhouetted diver to change positions. Eve Sonneman, from 1986, priced at €18000.

Black Ship (here): A failed expedition leads to a staged success leads to a modern restaging of the coverup – a reenactment of a reenactment. A wall covering, time twisting Cristina de Middel installation, priced at €30000.

Part 4 of our summary is here. Part 5 is here.

Send this article to a friend

Read more about: Adriana Lestido, Alison Rossiter, Anthony Hernandez, Barbara Kasten, Brassaï (Gyula Halász), Cristina de Middel, Éric Poitevin, Eve Sonneman, František Drtikol, Günter K., Joachim Schmid, Keith Smith, Lorna Simpson, Margaret Bourke-White, Marie Bovo, Nan Goldin, Nicholas Nixon, Nicolai Howalt, Nobuyoshi Araki, Otto Steinert, Paolo Gasparini, Pierre et Gilles, Robert Mapplethorpe, Roger Ballen, Thibault Hazelet, Viviane Sassen, Black Ship, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, Edwynn Houk Gallery, Farideh Cadot Associés, Fraenkel Gallery, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Galerie Daniel Blau, Galerie Daniel Templon, Galerie Kamel Mennour, Galerie Karsten Greve, Galerie Kicken Berlin, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Galerie Susanne Zander, Galerie Thomas Zander, Gallery Luisotti, Guido Costa Projects, Hamiltons Gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery, Martin Asbæk Gallery, Peter Freeman, Inc., Rolf Art, Stevenson Gallery, Taka Ishii Gallery, Toluca Fine Art, Yossi Milo Gallery, Paris Photo

One comment

  1. lorraine /

    Hi Loring. The NYTimes said the asking price was $450,000 for the set of 40 Nixon’s.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.

Recent Articles

Mo Yi, Selected Photographs 1988-2003

Mo Yi, Selected Photographs 1988-2003

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by Thames & Hudson (here). Hardcover, 11.3 x 8.9 inches, 192 pages, with 163 images in monochrome and color. Edited by Holly Roussell, ... Read on.

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter

This field is required.