Paris Photo’s Florence Bourgeois on the Shift from Photographer to Artist

The fair remains both a platform for discovery and exchange with more than 300 artists. Whitewall sat down with the artistic director of the fair, Florence Bourgeois, to talk about the leading international fair for photography.

WHITEWALL: What is your vision for Paris Photo?

FLORENCE BOURGEOIS: It is to present a panorama as complete as possible of photography over two centuries and to show the emerging artist scene. This year we created a new sector with Curiosa, which allowed us to present the young artist Edouard Taufenbach at Galerie Binome which worked really well. We also want to encourage new international art scenes.

WW: How do you work on bringing new and exciting projects each year ?

FB: We travel around the globe to art fairs and explore to find innovative projects. We also meet galleries that wouldn’t come to us in the first place and we try and identify their projects, maybe orient them in a certain way. Then finally we make our choices with the selection committee. Our goal is to offer quality content and make sure that there is as much geographic representation as possible.

WW: Any trends in photography you’re seeing this year?

FB: I find it almost impossible to speak of one trend. The fair is extremely heterogeneous. Of course historical and vintage photography came back a lot. It’s also interesting to see this shift of the photographer towards the status of the artist. For example, Matthias Bruggmann and Louis Heilbronn at Galerie Polaris. We also have a lot of artists who report on environmental and political issues including James Nachtwey at Contrasto Galleria and Edward Burtynsky at the Robert Koch Gallery.

Portrait by Angie Kremer.