Paris Photo Opens at the Grand Palais With 246 Exhibitors

By Marcus Bennett

Paris Photo opens at the Grand Palais on November 12 with 246 exhibitors, three weeks after Art Basel Paris evacuated the same venue and offered every exhibitor a 20 percent discount on booth fees.

On Tuesday evening, soft music played through the softly lit halls of the Grand Palais in Paris as VIPs trickled in for a private dinner hosted by the Prix Pictet. Dealers walked the aisles of a fair that, for the moment, looked ordinary. Three weeks earlier, the same rooms had emptied in a hurry. Art Basel Paris dismantled its booths on the night before protests planned for October 24 and closed two days ahead of schedule. The closure was unprecedented, and the fair subsequently offered all exhibitors a 20 percent discount on booth fees.

How did Art Basel Paris end so abruptly?

• Booths came down on the night before the demonstrations planned for October 24.
• The fair closed two days earlier than its published schedule.
• The early closure was unprecedented.
• Art Basel Paris responded with a 20 percent discount on booth fees for every exhibitor.
• In October, protesters called for the Grand Palais to be "taken back" from the wealthy few.

Civil unrest has not returned to the fever pitch of October, and the government has since exerted greater control over the demonstrations, which continue in an effort to draw attention to rising costs of living and under-funded public schools. Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo, told ARTnews that the organisers are watching how the situation evolves. "We are, of course, watching the situation closely to see how things evolve," she said. "At this stage there is nothing new to report, and nothing alarming. In fact, for two weeks the demonstrations have been taking place peacefully, and generally in the east of Paris. So we are not alarmed, and we remain vigilant so that we can respond if necessary."

What happens if the protests escalate again?

Paris Photo has closed early once before, after the 2015 terror attacks in Paris. Organizers lacked appropriate insurance at the time and reimbursed 20 percent of booth fees. "But that's no indication of what might happen in 2026," Bourgeois said. "It was an extremely different situation to that of the current protests." She declined to comment on the fair's current insurance policy. "If we ever do face something along those lines, our decision would be made based on protecting everyone's safety. That's the priority," she added.

German gallerist Thomas Zander, who exhibited at the shortened Art Basel Paris and is now back at Paris Photo, called the closure "a difficult feeling" and said it cost him "two good days" of sales. "It's strange in a way, but I love Paris," he said. "Now we are in a better situation this week, and there are not so many demonstrations in the center, and it's quieter than the week of Art Basel Paris."

What is on the walls, and at what price?

Zander describes his booth's contents as "museum-quality works," because "all the museum people come here, to Paris Photo." The display includes:

• Six dye transfer unique master prints by William Eggleston, 1968 to 1973, priced together at €1 million ($1.11 million)
• A rare series of 41 vintage gelatin silver prints of pinball machines by Candida Höfer, sold as a single display for €600,000 ($665,570)
• 16 works from Zoe Leonard's "Analogue" series (1998–2009) on New York's changing Lower East Side, offered for a total of €140,000 ($155,300)

Pace Gallery is offering a 1926 vintage gelatin silver print on a treated postcard by André Kertész for $500,000, thought to be one of only six or seven in the world. At the affordable end, medium-sized Kiki Smith still life photographs have already sold for $8,500 apiece.

Lauren Panzo, Pace's senior vice president, described the opening day. "It's been a very strong first day, with a number of significant sales made in the first hours of the fair, reflecting the strong demand for photography," she said. "It's particularly encouraging to see so many new collectors coming through." Panzo has considered the possibility of further interruptions and is "personally not concerned—there are always protests here." The current demonstrations seem more "under control," and she expects lines at the Grand Palais over the weekend, as in past years. "People in Paris love photography. I think there's such a love for this medium. It's so accessible," she said. "Photography is different."

Why do some dealers read the unrest as an advantage?

Several dealers said Paris Photo's approachability works in the fair's favour as protestors demand greater social equality. "I've been hearing from a lot of people that Paris Photo doesn't have quite the same image as Art Basel," Paris dealer Anne-Laure Buffard said. "It's a fair that has less of a connotation symbolizing a certain concentration of wealth, or an elitism reserved for the extremely rich." Buffard is showing salt-washed, crystalline photographs taken in the Dead Sea by Ilanit Illouz, priced from about $2,000 to $17,750, and painted and drawn photographs by Vasantha Yogananthan chronicling the impact of tourism on the northern Indian region of the Himalayas, priced between about $3,300 and $11,100. "We're all trying to stay optimistic," she said.

Bourgeois counters that the fair is part of the economy around it. "By taking part in a fair, we are not ignoring the realities of life around us, nor disconnected from it," she said. "We also represent part of the economy: there are galleries that make a living from this, that represent artists, give them visibility and support them by selling their work. I believe all of this is very important."

How is the photography market holding up?

The cooling that the global art market has faced over the past few years has reached photography too, Bourgeois said, and closing a sale now "comes down to a question of quality, which is why we've worked hard to represent the best that photography has produced over the last 200 years." Even so, "for top quality photographic works, prices remain high and are not falling."

What else has the fair put on view?

• Around 100 newly acquired and unseen photographs from the Centre Pompidou's collection
• A spotlight on women photographers, who now make up 38 percent of the artists represented, up from 20 percent when the program launched in 2018
• A dedicated Prix Pictet booth showing this year's winning photographs: Valérie Belin's "Still Life," an accumulation of plastic goods and memento mori, and Alfredo Jaar's "The End," documenting the receding Great Salt Lake in Utah
• Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's "View from the Window at Le Gras" (1825), considered the world's oldest known existing photograph, shown by Serge Plantureux
• Alessandro Calabrese's works at Milan's Viasaterna, priced between $2,440 and $8,430, printed on the "wrong" side of glossy photo paper for a painterly, electric-hued effect. "In the end, it creates a sort of watercolor painting, but [made] automatically," Calabrese said. "All my research is based on looking for the limit of the figurative side and the realism in photography, and trying to challenge it."

At the entrance, a large installation spanning the career of German photographer Thomas Ruff greets visitors, a collaboration by five galleries: David Zwirner, Konrad Fischer, Mai 36, Lia Rumma and Sprüth Magers. Photography marks its 200th anniversary this year, and a curated selection spanning every decade since its creation runs throughout the building.

What does the calmer atmosphere change for buyers and sellers?

For exhibitors, the October damage is already priced in: Art Basel Paris cut booth fees by 20 percent, and Zander lost two days of sales. Paris Photo now runs on its published schedule, and Panzo expects the Grand Palais queues of past years. The open question is whether the new collectors she describes convert into repeat buyers, and whether the fair's mid-market prices hold in a year when top-tier photographs still command sums near $1 million. Bourgeois has said any decision to shut would rest on safety alone, and that the demonstrations, for now, are peaceful.