Photo London has announced the Public Programme for the third edition of the Fair, which will take place 18 – 21 May 2017 (Preview 17 May) at Somerset House. Featuring 87 galleries from 17 countries, Photo London presents new photographers, new work by established Masters and gems from the history of photography. Commenting on the 2017 Public Programme Photo London co-Director Michael Benson said : “The aim of our Public Programme is to educate, inform and surprise. Each year the Programme gets stronger and we are delighted, this year, to be able to present a stellar group of artists each of whom contributes in their own special way to the Fair’s focus on the past, present and future of photography.”
Highlights of the Programme include:
– Special Exhibition by 2017 Master of Photography Taryn Simon
– Virtual reality installation by Mat Collishaw recreates Fox Talbot’s pioneering exhibition of photography from 1839
– Magnum Photos presents a 70th birthday exhibition curated by David Hurn and Martin Parr
– Pavilion installation featuring new work by William Klein
– Isaac Julien reprises photography and moving image in Looking for Langston
– Special exhibition by Juergen Teller
– dslcollection exhibits virtual reality and iconic photography
Taryn Simon
Photo London selected Taryn Simon as its Master of Photography for 2017 in recognition of her groundbreaking work. Meticulously mining, questioning and upsetting the certainty that the photographic image and the archive assert, Taryn Simon, turns our attention to the margins of systems of power, where control, its disruption, and the contours of their constructedness become visible. At Photo London, Taryn Simon will present Image Atlas, a work created in collaboration with programmer Aaron Swartz, which investigates cultural differences and similarities by indexing top image results for given search terms across local engines throughout the world. Photo London will also highlight Simon’s unique commitment to bookmaking as part of her artistic practice, with a display of Simon’s books — spanning from The Innocents, 2002, through to Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2016.
Mat Collishaw
Photo London and Somerset House, in collaboration with Blain|Southern Gallery, presents Thresholds, a new virtual reality (VR) artwork by internationally acclaimed artist Mat Collishaw. Using the latest VR technology, Collishaw will restage Fox Talbot’s pioneering 1839 exhibition of photography. With the aid of Collishaw’s careful digital reconstructions, this immersive experience will enable visitors to travel back in time to the moment when British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot first presented his photographic prints to the public in Birmingham.
Magnum Photos
To mark the 70th anniversary of Magnum Photos, Martin Parr and his fellow photographer David Hurn have curated a selection of works from the collection that Hurn has compiled over six decades through a series of swaps with fellow photographers. Key images from Hurn’s distinguished career are juxtaposed with prints from the photographers with whom he has swapped works including Bill Brandt, Bruce Davidson, Sergio Larrain and Diana Markosian.
William Klein
The Directors of Photo London have followed up last year’s Pavilion commission from Wolfgang Tillmans by inviting the legendary photographer and filmmaker William Klein to develop a new 18-metre mural for the space, presented in association with HackelBury Fine Art.
Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien’s artistic practice is rooted in photography. The exhibition he has made for Photo London presents renderings of the visual components from his award winning Looking for Langston as well as images documenting the making of the film, the staging, lighting, iconography and choreography. The photographs will be presented both in their original form as silver gelatin works printed on Ilford paper and as large scale works mounted on Diasec where Julien has used both digital and analogue techniques to create an immersive, cinematic experience.
Juergen Teller
Juergen Teller will present a special exhibition for Photo London in the Great Arch Hall of Somerset House. Teller has always been adept at navigating the art world and commercial photography, shooting high profile fashion campaigns for brands such as Celine, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, and Vivienne Westwood. He has published forty-one artist books and exhibition catalogues since 1996, which blur the boundaries between his commissioned and personal work. He currently holds a Professorship of Photography at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg.
dslcollection
dslcollection will present a multi-dimensional exhibition. Alongside the collection’s own virtual reality museum, there will be a seminal video work from the collection created by Chen Chieh Jen, one of the most influential figures in the development of Taiwanese conceptual art. Chieh Jen’s video work takes its inspiration from Louis Carpeaux’s famous 1905 photograph of a lingchi execution. As a counterpart to the historical references in Chen’s video, dslcollection presents the first virtual reality platform for a private art collection. As a pioneer in the use of technology in the art world, dslcollection’s latest project allows the public to experience the collection via virtual reality with participants able to navigate themselves around the virtual museum and interact with the artworks directly
