Perfect Pairing: Paris Photo + Los Angeles
Image Courtesy of 313 Art Project and Paris Photo
Image courtesy of Fototeka
Image courtesy of Fototeka
© BMW AG
Image courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery
Image Courtesy of Paris Photo
Image Courtesy of The Estate of Peter Roehr and Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin
Image Courtesy of Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
Image Courtesy of the Michael Kohn Gallery and Conner Family Trust
Image Courtesy of the Artist and Sean Kelly, New York
Image Courtesy of the artist and Murray Guy, New York
Image Courtesy of Ambach & Rice Gallery, Los Angeles
Image courtesy of Cristina De Middel
Image courtesy of Cristina De Middel
Photo director Julien Frydman played the ever-present ringmaster at the preview for the second annual Paris Photo Los Angeles art fair held at Paramount Pictures Studios on Thursday, April 24. He greeted guests including Orlando Bloom and Jodie Foster at the entrance to the lot’s famed New York set, he guided others to the sound stages containing booths from galleries near and far, and he even managed to pop into the exhibition of images from the LAPD Photo Archives. “We had to have this space for the LAPD images,” said Frydman about a room cordoned off with chain link fencing and plywood devoted to the inaugural Unedited! exhibition of LAPD images—taken during a period of time from the 1930s to the 1960s—that was created in collaboration with fototeka. Highlights included images of notes slipped from would-be robbers to bank tellers asking for $1 and $2 bills or emblazoned with the simple demand: “Stick up, don’t move, smile.”
Over 80 galleries and art book dealers from 18 countries showed at the fair that ran through Sunday, April, 27, and luminaries from a host of museums also stopped in to see the works displayed on simple white walls. Quentin Bajac and Roxana Marcoci of MOMA, Stephanie Barron and Britt Salvesen of LACMA, Joanne Heyler of The Broad Museum, The Hammer Museum’s Ann Philbin, and SFMOMA’s Sandra Phillips all made the rounds over the weekend. Hollywood was also well represented by such collectors as Brad Pitt (who examined works inside a space devoted to Venice’s Slete Gallery), Julie Delpy, Gary Oldman, Angie Harmon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Mamie Gummer, Edward Norton, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Musicians including Bryan Ferry (in town after his Coachella performances), Moby, Frank Ocean, and Joni Mitchell also took in the show. For those who wanted a more in-depth look at various genres of photography, book dealer Artbook D.A.P. took over a corner store on the back lot and held signings with L.A.-based photographer John Divola as well as Steve Khan. Divola’s shots of abandoned buildings with walls containing short exclamatory statements brought to mind the images of the bank robbery notes from the LAPD archives. These days, such phrases seem bound for the electronic ether, but, at the fair, they were grounded in a particular time and place and documented on film. A novel concept.
By Elizabeth Varnell
Pictured: Atta Kim, ON-AIR Project 110-2, the New York series, Times Square, eight-hour exposure, 2005, Chromogenic Print, Exhibitor : 313 ART PROJECT
Image Courtesy of 313 Art Project and Paris Photo
