bookshop M

One of the discoveries that I made at Paris Photo this year was the Japanese bookseller, bookshop M, situated right at the entrance of the fair. There is so much work to see on the walls that I sometimes find it difficult to find the time to spend with all of the books that are on show (and in the case of Schaden, to wade through the crowd of people parked in front of his booth).

But bookshop M's minimalist stand did catch my attention. They have an interesting model, as they are actually an offshoot of the design studio, MATCH and company (the Japanese do like to muck around with capitalisation), which is run by the extremely talented art directing brothers, Satoshi and Hikari Machiguchi. Their father, Tadashi, was a renowned designer in the 'golden age' of Japanese photo-books (1960s and 1970s), and so they fell into the cauldron of photo-books from an early age, growing up surrounded by design but also by inks, papers and printing techniques. Their design work really stands out in an increasingly crowded photo-book world. Despite their education, their designs do not feel like 'retro' throwbacks to the 1970s, but instead they manage to be contemporary and, most importantly, extremely well-suited to their subject.

If you want proof you will have to get onto the internet, as bookshop M is an online-only venture: another interesting aspect of their model. The website is very well put together (the best I've seen in this field), with short slideshows showing the inside of all of the books that they sell. Also they have gone the extra mile and translated the site into (very approximate) English, which makes the whole experience even better as you are regularly treated to moments of hilarity.

At Paris Photo I picked up Akihide Tamura's Afternoon, a collection of 23 beautifully simple and sparse landscape photographs taken between 1969 and 1989. In a numbered and signed limited edition of 700, this was a bargain for 35 euros ($33 online). An extra bonus is that the book is not officially published until December 9, the first time I have spent two weeks with a book that doesn't really exist yet.

James Griffioen's Feral Houses

Try conjuring up an image of Detroit in your mind. I can pretty much guarantee that it looks nothing like James Griffioen's series Feral Houses. The city has been making headlines in the last couple of years for being one of the places worst hit by the recession (and other headlines in the photo-community for being the favourite destination of lazy photographers looking for cheap photographs of desolation and ruin in modern America). I don't know if Griffioen is lazy or not (somehow I doubt it), but I couldn't help liking his series Feral Houses (I am Australian after all and the word feral is like a national treasure to us). I have to say I don't think these photographs are particularly proficient, and they may be a bit of a cheap thrill showing nature eating up the ruins of the golden years of American industry, but they did show me something I was really not expecting to see.

Matthew Swarts

Matthew Swarts has a lot of intriguing and really diverse work on his website. He has done some fairly straightforward series on children with cancer and people with developmental disabilities, but in his recent work he seems more interested in exploring the limits of photography and its changing borders as a result of the internet. He spends "an inordinate amount of time collecting strange images from the web" and combining photographs with informational graphics to get results like the image above. I liked his aesthetic which goes against the grain of the cold, objective, high precision imagery that is so common these days. These images are sometimes hard to find a way into, but I found their complexity intriguing.

Louis Porter: One Hundred Flowers

One of the nice discoveries I made during Paris Photo was a fellow blogger's foray into publications. Laurence Vecten who blogs at LOZ has just published her first photo-book of Australian photographer Louis Porter's series One hundred flowers. Porter photographed the floral displays that were brought in to beautify Beijing in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. While his aesthetic is not dissimilar to Martin Parr's, I actually found this work more interesting than Parr's latest Luxury series. His accumulation of high-colour floral detail does a great job of conveying the gargantuan scale on which things get done in China and made me chuckle more than once at the PRC's efforts at government-controlled nature.

The book is printed digitally (and well) in a limited edition of 100 and its design suits the subject and isn't afraid of packing several images to the one page. As Hester Keijser from Mrs Deane pointed out we can't all become mini Jeff Ladds, but it's good to see blogging leading to other projects like this one. You can see more spreads from the book and even get your very own copy here.

Paris Photo: crossing the finish line

Paris Photo 2009 has just drawn to a close and already the reports are flowing in thick and fast. There is much less of a consensus than for NYPH, which was generally perceived to have been a bit disappointing (see my previous round-up post on this). I am just happy to have survived it all at this stage and have yet to form many coherent thoughts, but here are my "impressions à chaud."

Judging from all the opinions that I have heard over the past few days, Paris Photo manages to be different things to different people. Pretty much everyone I spoke to had a different set of highlights and there have been many totally divergent assessments of whether this was a good year or not. The only common position I have seen emerging is that Maurizio Anzeri is great and I am certainly not about to disagree. I will be highlighting a few of my picks or discoveries from the fair in the next few days, but at first I wanted to give a few general impressions.

Overall this year's fair felt less contemporary than previous years, with more vintage work on show particularly from the postwar years. Aside from the Arab and Iranian material which was on show given this year's theme: there were strong representations of Japanese, Korean and South African work, both from domestic and international galleries. China was a notable absentee (only one Chinese gallery was present, 798 Gallery from Beijing), especially compared to the giddy heights of a few years ago.

I think that Paris Photo's idea to have a guest country every year is a real asset (I would say this though as I am involved in trying to improve exchanges between Japan and the West in the field of photography). People often seem disappointed by the selection of work from the guest country or region, and some guests are undoubtedly stronger than others, but even if they just happen to see one new artist that they hadn't before, I think it is worth it. The art market is often inclined not to take risks these days and Paris Photo's guest country system helps to force a certain amount of new lesser known material in each year. One positive trend that I noticed is that a couple of Japanese galleries (G/P and Base) that were first-timers at Paris Photo last year have now stayed on. This cannot happen every year of course as space is at a premium but it is good to see that some doors are staying open.

The sheer quantity of work on show and its increasingly global scope make it very difficult to be completely disappointed: no matter what your specific area of interest might be, you will always find something to get excited about. I think treating Paris Photo like an exhibition is a mistake: too much work, too many people, not enough space,  no natural air or light, and the world's longest queue for the world's most expensive coffee are some pretty big obstacles to a great viewing-only experience.

A major part of what make's Paris Photo's success is the people: it has become the major destination in Europe (and even globally) for photographers, directors, curators, booksellers, publishers, magazines, journos, and bloggers and it is by running into all these people that the fair becomes really interesting. I have come to think of Paris Photo as a place to make discoveries and great contacts. This was the first year that I have attended as a blogger and thanks to Laurence Vecten of LOZ we had a discussion with a bunch of other European photo-bloggers which lasted two hours but could quite happily have gone on for a couple more days. This is the kind of event that makes Paris Photo such a unique opportunity.

My one (slightly old-mannish) whinge is that the fair really is getting incredibly crowded. I'd be curious to know how much more attendance there was this year compared to 2008.  I heard some dealers complaining that the crowds are making it difficult to show work to collectors as there are always dozens of people looking over their shoulder to see what is going on... not a very conducive environment for making a sale. As they are the ones that make the economics of the fair work, this could be a big deal, but the idea of giving a 1.5 hour slot to professionals and collectors in the morning is a good innovation and I don't think it makes life that much more difficult for the general public. In terms of sales I am not in a position to gauge how things went overall, but my impression is that the feeling of panic that gripped everyone in 2008 has been replaced by cautious optimism. Let's hope that keeps on going.

Further reading: for another round-up of the fair and links to even more, check out Nick's excellent On Shadow blog.