Four days from now, Julien Frydman, director of Paris Photo Los Angeles, will know if he’s managed to win the bet he made with himself to accomplish what no one else has done before: to hold a genuine photography fair on the West Coast.
Four days out, and the bet is not yet won. Julien is wagering big on modern and contemporary work, the fringes of photography, installations, videos and other new forms of expression. It was the day after his nomination, two years ago at Paris Photo, that he thought of America. New York is too congested. Miami is taken. All that’s left is Los Angeles. It’s the closest the contiguous United States gets to China, Korea and Japan, and a door to South and Latin America.
“On the West Coast there is a tradition of modernity and perpetual renewals,” says Frydman. “Here, nothing is fixed: neither the artists, nor the galleries, or the institutions. It seemed necessary for me in this first edition to show the different trends in avant-garde photography, its new frontiers and the new desire to be closer to Frieze or Basel than the academy. The coast exudes change and interaction. Los Angeles is also a capital of avant-garde design and architecture.”
The selection for Paris Photo Los Angeles, as for Paris Photo, has been controversial. Why would he choose some obscure, hip gallery over a more established one?
Julien stands by his choices. We’ll know how they play out next Monday.
