Paris Photo 2026 marks 200 years of photography at the Grand Palais

Paris Photo opens on 12 November 2026 at the Grand Palais as the first major event in France's year-long bicentennial of photography, running to 15 November and welcoming galleries and publishers from 38 countries.

France has fixed the medium's birth at 1827, when Nicéphore Niépce fixed an image of the view from a window at his country estate between 4 June and 18 July that year. The national celebration runs from September 2026 to September 2027.

"Paris Photo presents a panorama of photography, from the 19th century to the latest experimentations with digital art," said Florence Bourgeois, director of the fair. "This year even more, we will highlight the diversity of photography practices through 200 years of history. There will be a focus on the historical thread of the medium."

Who anchors the anniversary?

Thomas Ruff anchors it. The fair's entrance statement dedicates a wall of nearly 40 metres at the Grand Palais to the German artist, known for interrogating photography's nature and technology. The installation will draw on works from Sterne ('Stars', 1989–1992), made with images from the European Southern Observatory, and Jpegs (2004–2009), his pixelated series of landscapes, modern technology and historical events.

"We look at the history of photography from a contemporary point of view," said artistic director Anna Planas. "The installation will highlight Ruff's engagement with the medium and its evolving technologies offering an exploration of the grammar of photography."

Florian Ebner and Damarice Amao of the Centre Pompidou/Musée National d'Art Moderne will curate a show on photography's development, working with the institution's collection alongside Julie Jones, director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. More galleries will present prints from the early years of image-making in their booths.

What does the fair say about photography's present instability?

The Voices sector, curated by Francesco Zanot and Zasha Colah, takes the title La Disparition ('The Disappearance'). It confronts a paradox: a tool conceived to preserve what would otherwise vanish is being celebrated just as its traditional form appears unstable, transformed and challenged by processes altering its nature and status.

Voices includes Léonard Pongo, the Belgian-Congolese artist who plays with the limits of visibility and showed in the 2026 Venice Biennale. "Francesco is a photography curator and researcher," Planas explained. "Zasha comes from the contemporary art world. This is something we also really enjoy, opening up to curators from outside photography."

The Digital sector goes to Marco De Mutiis, digital curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur and editor of the 2025 publication The Lure of the Image. "Photography has been a continuously unstable, constantly changing medium," he said. "And digital has fundamentally transformed it. The Digital sector will include artists who show how photography has changed, from glitches and Photoshop to AI and machine learning, but we will also consider that ongoing history."

De Mutiis traces two histories. One begins in science, positivism and industrial efficiency — "the camera was invented in the time of the Industrial Revolution, a time of an ideology which was powerful in erasing other forms". The other links photography to spiritualism, ghosts and the occult, beliefs he says are resurfacing now.

"I have been interested to see many artists now coming back to magic, perhaps as a way to escape the algorithm," he said. "Forms that are subjective or embrace mystery and even magic are an escape from that, almost a refuge or resistance to this scientific eye."

Which other threads run through the fair?

• Galerie Christophe Gaillard presents a solo display by Isabelle Le Minh, who probes the new properties of digital images.
• London's Large Glass pairs each artist with a historical figure, connected by places of significance or shared themes, per Planas.
• An association of Argentinian galleries traces the country's photographic development: Rolf Art presents Adriana Lestido; Vasari brings a group show after last year's booth devoted to Julio Le Parc, now in a major Tate Modern retrospective.
• The Emergence sector includes Randa Mirza, photographing the destruction caused by Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon, and Nicolás Combarro, whose work considers how to depict concentration camps in the absence of historical images.
• The talks programme pairs Tina Campt, Princeton professor and author of Listening to Images and A Black Gaze, with South African visual activist and photographer Zanele Muholi.

The breadth is the point, according to Planas. "We trigger as much diversity as possible. This year we will welcome galleries and publishers from 38 countries – the fair is becoming more and more open, and the bicentenary may also have an attractive effect to the international community."

Bourgeois adds a caveat of ambition over specificity: "Through our conversation and book talks programmes, curated paths and specific presentations, we have the will to give a wide vision of photography today." Whether a four-day fair can carry two centuries of the medium remains the open question the Grand Palais will answer in November.