This year over 160 exhibitors from all over the world will stand at the event bringing a mix of vintage and early photography, modern classics and contemporary works, accompanied by 31 publishers alongside installations, a programme of talks, films and videos and much more.
Paris’ auctioneers also make sure that they capitalise on the expected photo fan footfall by timing their specialist sales around the fair.
Sotheby’s and Christie’s, for example, each have two photograph sales (one single-owner and one mixed-owner event), while a number of dedicated auctions (or auctions with photograph sections) are staged at the Drouot auction centre.
The mix across the city ranges from works from the earliest days of photography to contemporary images, but this selection concentrates on examples of photographs by pioneers of the genre, offered in the both the fair and the salerooms.
1. Louis-Antoine Froissart - The city of Lyon under flood
Photo credit: Courtesy of Hans P. Kraus Jr. Inc., New York
Louis-Antoine Froissart at Hans P Kraus Jr, Paris Photo
Hans P Kraus Jr, New York specialist in 19th and early 20thcentury photographs, is a regular exhibitor at Paris Photo. Among the works that the gallery will be showing is this early 1856 salt print, a 9 x 11in (23 x 32cm) image mounted on paper printed from a collodion negative depicting the city of Lyon under flood.
It is the work of Louis-Antoine Froissart, who was the official photographer for the city of Lyon, and records one of the worst floods in French history. The print is dated 19 mai 1856in pencil and was presented by Froissart to the mayor of Lyon through whose family it has descended. It is priced at $30,000.
2. Gustave le Gray - Pantheon in Paris
Gustave le Gray at Robert Hershkowitz, Paris Photo
This albumen print from a glass negative from 1857 by Gustave le Gray depicts the Pantheon in Paris. It measures 15.75in x 12in (40 x 30cm) and will be priced at around £50,000 on the stand of UK dealer Robert Hershkowitz at Paris Photo.
3. Joseph-Philibert de Prangey - Arch of Constantine
Photo credit: Sotheby’s / Art Digital Studio
Joseph-Philibert de Prangey at Sotheby’s
Included in Sotheby’s mixed-owner photographs sale on November 9 is a hitherto unpublished ensemble of 35 daguerreotypes by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey. They have come from the family collection of the gardeners who took care of the villa where he lived in his later life.
De Prangey was a pioneering photographer whose talents only came to general fame early this century after the discovery of a cache of his daguerreotypes on the estate where he lived. He took a three-year trip to the Mediterranean and the near East between 1842-45.
These images of Rome relate to the first leg and include this daguerreotype of the Arch of Constantine taken in 1842. The quarter-plate daguerreotype, measuring 4.75 x 3.5in (12 x 9cm) and titled and numbered in ink on a label, is estimated at €12,000-18,000.
4. Gustave le Gray - Colossi of Memnon at Thebes
Image credit: ©Delon-Hoebanx/Drouot
Gustave le Gray at Delon-Hoebanx
Included in a mixed-discipline Delon-Hoebanx sale at Drouot on November 14 is a collection of 71 mostly unpublished photographs by Gustave le Gray, which are contained in two albums. The majority of the views were taken during the photographer’s trip down the Nile in January 1867. Pictured here is one of them showing the Colossi of Memnon at Thebes, a print on albumenised paper estimated at €4000-5000.
5. Félix Nadar and Eugène Chevreul
Nadar at Ader
Among the vintage highlights of a large 350-plus-lot sale of photographs to be held by Ader at Drouot on November 8 is a group of works relating to the photographers Félix Nadar and his son Paul.
It includes a group of nine prints by Paul on albumenised paper relating to an interview between Félix and Eugène Chevreul, the famous physicist and colour theorist, conducted on the occasion of the latter’s 100 birthday at the Nadar studio in 1886. A precursor of today’s photo articles, the ensemble of prints, ranging in size from 6.25 x 4.75in to 7 x 5.25in (16 x 12 to 18 x 13.5cm) is estimated at €8000-12,000.
