This year’s edition of Paris Photo was dominated by black-and-white and documentary photography. One encountered prints of Weegee, Lee Friedlander, Walker Evans, Vivian Maier and William Eggleston at every intersection. The contemporary art galleries on hand were right to exhibit formats that were more intimate and less exuberant than usual.
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My journey through the fair began with Tasveer, an Indian gallery participating to Paris Photo for the first time. On display are safe bets like the portraits of wrestlers by the undisputed master of Indian photography, Magnum photographer Raghu Rai, as well as an exotic Jodhpur palace photographed by Derry Moore, and Jyoti Bhatt’s simple shot of a woman drawing a mandala in a Rajasthan house. Then, a different ambiance on a different continent: I joined the dance of Malik Sidibé’s teenagers on Christmas Eve, 1963, at the Galerie Magnin-A. I left these Bamako youth for Paul Graham’s New York crowd at Les Filles du Calvaire gallery. Then my feet lead me to Esther Woerdehoff to see Duane Michals’ surrealist (and very Parisian) series of French artist portraits. Finally, exhausted, I rested at the Galerie Tanti with Fouad El Khoury’s sleepers in the Lebanese countryside, who give no sign of the war brewing at the garden gates. I left the Grand Palais into the pouring rain, taking with me these powerful images and the sense of having returned from a journey through space and time.
