"La rentrée" in Paris: upcoming exhibitions

Ihei Kimura, Paris

As Paris slowly drags itself out of its long summer slumber, I thought this would be a good time to draw up a list of a few of the forthcoming photography exhibitions to look out for when the city switches itself back on in the next couple of weeks.

  • The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in the 14th will be showing vintage work by August Sander taken from the collection of the SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne. Sander was a master of the portrait and, with a lot of work that will be shown for the first time in Paris, this one should not be missed. From September 9th.

  • Galerie Vu in the 4th will be showing work taken from the collaboration between Anders Petersen and JH Engström, From Back Home (the book won this year's Author Book Award at Arles and I recommend tracking it down if there are any copies left). Engström was Petersen's assistant in the early 90s and their photographic wanderings intertwine beautifully in this project. From September 11th.
  • Vera Lutter will be having her first solo show at Galerie Xippas in the 3rd with work spanning the past ten years of her career. Lutter makes pin-hole cameras out of entire rooms and the resulting photographs of architectural and industrial landmarks are monumental in scale. From September 12th.
  • For some more photographic portraiture, but in a totally different vein to Sander, Erwin Olaf will be exhibiting recent work taken from the series Laboral Escena at the Magda Danysz Gallery in the 11th. The work, inspired by the eponymic building in Gijon, Spain, consists of portraits in period costume reminiscent of "the classic paintings of the Spanish Gold century." Some of his work is a little too cold and metallic for my liking, but I am curious to see these. From September 12th.
  • The Quai Branly Museum in the 7th is holding the second installment of its photography biennale, Photoquai. Although the first edition of this event did not exactly fulfill its potential, it still promises to be a good opportunity to discover work that doesn't make it onto the conventional photography circuit. From September 22nd.
  • The blockbuster show of the the next few months promises to be the Pompidou's Subversion des images, a huge (over 400 pieces) overview of surrealist photography and film including work by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, Raoul Ubac, Jacques-André Boiffard, Maurice Tabard, André Breton and Paul Eluard. This should make an excellent companion to the Bilder träume exhibition of surrealist painting and sculpture which is on in Berlin until November 22nd. From September 23rd.
  • And finally, the Marais' Galerie Particulière is reopening today so you have another chance to catch Metropolis, a great exhibition of work taken from Michael Wolf's Architecture of Density and Transparent City series (I reviewed the show when it opened in July). Until September 26th.