The fair runs from May 16-19 at Somerset House, and the exhibition, The Magic Art of French Calotype: Paper Negative Photography 1846-1860, runs in the venue’s public space. According to the dealership, it is a chance to introduce an English audience to a form of photography that is little represented in British institutions.
Hershkowitz says: “When the pursuit and acquisition of fine photographs became the common passion of a very mixed group of art savvy individuals and American and Canadian museums in the late 1970s, early French paper negative photography was considered the most desirable, the images the most intriguing intellectually, the prints the most delectable.”
The examples on show at the fair have never been exhibited in the UK before.
Elsewhere at the fair, the dealership offers its typical selection of European photography from the 1840s-60s. For this edition it focuses on British photography including a portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron of her son and Robert Howlett’s photo of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s The Great Eastern, the largest ship of the 19th century.
There are extra works by the French brothers Bisson Frères, William Henry Fox Talbot and Linnaeus Trip. Prices on the stand range from around £3000-60,000.
Charles Nègre, Street Vendor, c.1852, courtesy of Hershkowitz and part of his exhibition The Magic Art of French Calotype: Paper Negative Photography 1846-1860.
Ninth instalment
This is the ninth edition of the fair, which hosts mainly Contemporary photography galleries and includes awards for student and emerging photographers.
However, there are several specialists in early and vintage works including Roland Belgrave Vintage Photography, which offers an early set of silver gelatin prints, Zander Galerie bringing a selection of 1950s colour photographs by Helen Levitt, and Suite 59 Gallery which features prints of Picasso and Brigitte Bardot by Edward Quinn.
