The 12th edition of Unseen Photo Fair, an international fair dedicated to the evolution of contemporary photography based in the heart of Amsterdam, saw a redoubling of innovative proposals and unexpected perspectives from different horizons.
François Visser, Viviane Sassen, Michiel Kluiters, Daniel Arsham, Janette Beckman, Terry O'Neill, Fan Ho, Ben Thomas, Svante Gullichsen, Hans van Asch, Dean West... It's a wide range of photographers that this new edition of Unseen has invited us to. This Amsterdam-based international fair, founded in 2012, is dedicated to contemporary photography in all its forms.
It was born out of a desire to highlight the many talents developing experimental projects, whether these stem from first works by emerging artists or previously unpublished pieces by established names. It has made a name for itself thanks to its high curatorial standards and intimate atmosphere. " Unseen connects the new with the established and the established with the innovative, creating a platform that has become an important overview of the latest developments and directions the medium is taking ," explains founder Roderick van der Lee.
Year after year, the fair continues to attract galleries, photography enthusiasts, collectors and art professionals worldwide.
AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE DISCIPLINE
This 12th iteration, held from September 19 to 22, once again transformed Westergas, a village of art and culture located in the Westerpark public park, into an unmissable rendezvous for the visual arts. The founder chose to focus the program on a global reflection on photography, bringing together established and emerging talents. The event welcomed 71 exhibitors. A lower number than in 2023, due to the strategy of some galleries to enlarge their stands with specific hangings.
The selection also included 65 publishers from the book market, to offer image lovers even more to feed their libraries, and 8 projects from the Unbound section, which probed and surpassed the limits of the photographic universe, notably with videos by Israeli artist Yael Bartana, whose works are part of the collections of MoMA, Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou. Her work focuses on the social rituals that shape individual identities and collective memory.
VISIBILITY DYNAMICS
The fair's approach is also to stay on course with the arrival of new participants. Such is the case with Budapest's Einspach gallery, which took part in the event for the first time, devoting a solo show to Tamas Dezsö. The artist takes a beautiful yet sombre look at pastoral landscapes and forgotten ways of life in Hungary, Romania and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Elsewhere, London's Open Doors took a curatorial approach to photography, presenting new works from Javier Hirschfeld Moreno's Profile series. The Spanish artist looks at the role and responsibility of the medium in representing the self and collective identities.
Further afield, Amsterdam's Motormond space focused on pandiasporic cultures, while Homecoming gallery, which opened its first space in the Dutch city this summer, presented works by Mia Weiner. Originally from Chicago, this photographer explores identity, gender and the psychology of human relationships. She is also one of the winners of the 2024 V&A Parasol Foundation Award for Women in Photography, launched by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
BIG LEAGUE
Unseen has reaffirmed its position thanks to a number of established galleries, such as Annet Gelink's in Amsterdam, which puts the spotlight on Dutch documentary and fashion photographer Bertien van Manen (1935-2024), who died last May. Her career was notably inspired by Robert Frank's The Americans series, and several of her works have joined the collections of New York's MoMA, Paris' MEP, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
As for the regulars, Antwerp's Steiglitz 19 has remained at the forefront, choosing this year to highlight the work of Kevin Osepa. The Curacao-born artist is interested in the identities of young Afro-Caribbean people.
Stevenson Gallery, based between Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam, presented a solo show by the prolific artist Viviane Sassen, whose work is also on show at the Foam Museum. Unseen also featured museum exhibitions throughout Amsterdam, such as those by Awoiska van der Molen at Huis Marseille and by several young Belgian photographers at the Brakke Grond cultural center.
BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT
We close with several exhibits from the "Past/Present" section, which retraced the history of photography. Depth of Field (D.O.F.) in Amsterdam offered an interesting look at the photographic representation of textile imagery. The gallery exhibited a rare 1931 print of Giuseppe Enrie's Turin Shroud, otherwise known as the "Shroud of Turin" or "Holy Shroud", the famous yellowed linen sheet showing the image of a man with traces of wounds related to the crucifixion of Jesus. The photographic approach makes the contours of one of history's "most studied artifacts" more clearly visible. The first photographic reproductions of works of art were also made by Adolphe Braun.
A change of register with the Blue Lotus Gallery in Hong Kong, which took us into the urban effervescence of the Chinese city with Fan Ho (1931-2016), one of the masters of photography, and the contemporary vision of rising star Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze.
We close the section and this edition of Unseen with the SmithDavidson gallery, based in Amsterdam, Mexico and Miami, which proposed a lovely dialogue between two iconic British photographers, Terry O'Neill and Janette Beckman.
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