Paris Photo: A space to look, think, and talk

Inside the twenty-eighth edition of the world’s leading photography fair

For the twentyeight edition, Paris Photo consistently assesses photography and images not as transient content, as their most common modes of online circulation suggest, but as a living language reflecting historical, critical and technological shifts. Founded in 1997, Paris Photo has become the world’s leading event devoted to the photographic medium, bridging the analog and digital, the archival and experimental from increasingly more diverse cultures and backgrounds. At times when the boundaries of photography are expanding, the fair offers something increasingly rare: the chance to slow down, to look closely, and talk about images.

As the fair’s Artistic Director Anna Planas reports, their efforts is to “try to bring to the fair photography in its widest vision and form — from historical pieces to installations that explore its materiality — to create a strong visual dialogue.” This year’s edition underscores the expansion of the vital language of photography, revealing how the medium continues to evolve, adapt, and resonate with contemporary culture, exploring notions of kinship, landscape, and belonging that reflect our shared human and environmental connections.

The Main sector of Paris Photo 2025 promises a vast constellation of one hundred eighty three galleries that trace the medium’s pulse from its historic roots to its most daring frontiers. Of particular interest, Greif community artists and past contributors Tania Franco Klein and Carlos Idun-Tawiah are in the spotlight with their solo shows presented by galleries ROSEGALLERY and Alta respectively. Voices sector, curated by Devika Singh and Nadine Wietlisbach, places a curatorial reflection at the heart of the Fair with a proposal on landscape and a project on kinship ties and their representations. Gauri Gill’s work is presented by Vadehra Art Gallery, while Torbjørn Rødland’s uncanny images by Eva Presenhuber Gallery.

The Emergence sector presents artists in the likes of Claudia Fuggetti, Chloé Azzopardi, Melissa Schriek, Emma Sarpaniemi and András Ladocsi, whose innovative visual strategies and experimental methodologies are propelling their work into the spotlight as defining contributions to a new generation of image-makers.

Among the most anticipated presentations is Elena Subach, whose poetic visual narratives draw deeply from Ukrainian folklore and collective memory, offering images that resonate with tenderness and historical weight. Jess T. Dugan brings an intimate counterpoint with portraits that foreground identity, belonging, and the emotional complexity of queer experience. Maude Arsenault’s presents her continuous exploration of womanhood, freedom, and the shifting terrain of time. Matthieu Gafsou pushes viewers toward the future through investigations of technology, transhumanism, and the ethics of progress. Lukas Hoffmann’s contemplative studies of form and light offer a quieter meditation within the fair’s vibrant atmosphere, while Senta Simond’s striking portraits challenge entrenched notions of beauty and representation.

Keisha Scarville’s work, rooted in migration and ancestral memory, sits alongside Tommy Kha’s humorous yet incisive examinations of identity through self-portraiture. Clarissa Bonet transforms the urban environment into cinematic tableaux, and Roger Ballen’s psychologically charged imagery continues to unsettle and inspire. Adding further depth, André Grüetzner, Łukasz Rusznica, and Maja Daniels bring experimental, genre-blurring approaches that underscore Paris Photo’s enduring commitment to photographic discourse and critical thinking.