This week, Photo London has returned to Somerset House for its sixth edition – and we really couldn’t be any happier about it! The fair once again brings together leading photography galleries and publishers from 15 countries, alongside an innovative public programme of exhibitions, talks and workshops. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with a wide range of galleries and the exhibited artists. Here’s a selection of those we’ve had the pleasure of working with this year – and the fascinating work that they do.
Hassan Hajjaj, 193 Gallery
193 Gallery (193, like the number of countries in the world) is an art gallery that aims to take a tour of the world of contemporary art through exhibitions dedicated to countries and its emerging artists. For 2021, the focus is on two photographers from their “Colors of Africa” exhibition: Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco), Thandiwe Muriu (Kenya).
Jo Bradford, Gas Gallery
Gas Gallery is a London based collaborative art organisation founded and curated by Gina Cross. Jo Bradford’s three new series, Hours, Minutes and Seconds, launch at this year’s fair. The titles refer to the correlation to how long the exposure to light was to create the colours and gradients in each collection.
Graduate Salon (Jess O’Neill Pictured)
The Graduates’ Salon continues Photo London’s commitment to showcasing emerging talent by featuring 24 graduates of 9 leading UK colleges and universities. Pictured is Jess O’Neill.
David McGee, ECAD Gallery
ECAD LONDON is a pioneering art gallery with a focus in Fine Art Photography. The Peckham based gallery, attracts and exhibits work from emerging, mid-career and internationally acclaimed artists.
Having travelled extensively, it is the Irish landscape, particularly the Atlantic coastline, that has become the focus of David McGee’s work in recent years. It is his home, the source of his subject matter and the inspiration for his work.
The Association of Photographers
The Association of Photographers is a professional organisation for photographers and creative image makers. Formed 1968 it is the standard bearer of creative excellence in both business and artistic practice. Exhibited photographers work has been chosen as a reflection on the vast talent within their membership.
Liz Calvi and Monique Atherton, Seager Gallery
SEAGER is a newly established commercial art gallery located in Deptford, South
East London. The programme is focused on art that uses digital technology in its process, as its product, or as its subject.
Fleur Olby, Galerie Prints
GALERIE PRINTS offers works from both well known masters and emerging talent from across the world. Fleur Olby’s delicate imagery is about the environment, the transformative spirit of nature & the experience or sensation of ‘beauty’.
The sequence was made digitally without filters in one day. It is a performative visual poem of the energy of the weather, the sublime, an ode back to Nature. Inspired by the enigmatic landscape – the quietness of the still Fog creates in reflections of water.
Depicted in repetition where the gaze changes and stays the same, the horizon and elements become a landscape and disappear as Fog changes and moves. The poem questions the connection of memory and emotion within the photographic capture. The prose enacts the methodology.
David Yarrow, Camera work
Camera Work Gallery presents a selection of works by classic and contemporary artists who illustrate ‘The Beauty of Life’ in their works at Photo London 2021. Amongst them there are selected pieces by artists such as David LaChapelle, Albert Watson and David Yarrow (pictured).
Susan Derges and Celine Bodin, Purdy Hicks Gallery
Purdy Hicks Gallery first opened its gallery in Southwark in 1995 and has continually supported the evolving practice of both established and emerging international artists, each with an individual and radical approach to the artistic possibilities of their time.
Susan Derges’ work revolves around the creation of visual metaphors, exploring the relationship between the observer and the observed; the self and nature or the imagined and the ‘real.
Through her photographs, Céline Bodin investigates the notions of gender and identity in Western culture, weighing the legacy of our art history.
Benji Reid, October Gallery
October Gallery opened in Bloomsbury, London, in 1979 and quickly established itself as a pioneer in showcasing contemporary art from around the world.
Benji Reid considers himself a Choreo-Photolist; a term he coined to encapsulate his unique practice where theatricality, choreography and photography meet in the image. His breathtaking photographs, comprised primarily of self-portraits in incredible, anti-gravitational poses with a medley of props, draws the audience into a different dimension.
Delphine Diallo, Boogie Wall
BOOGIE-WALL is a contemporary art gallery with an exhibition programme at the frontier of experimental art underlining dramatic history culture and society. Diallo’s intention is to change the gaze in photography, create a new narrative to empower black women and create new experiences for consciousness to expand.
Nadav Kander, The Photographers Gallery
The Photographers’ Gallery is the UK’s leading centre for the presentation and exploration of photography. Established in London in 1971 as the first independent gallery in the world dedicated to the medium.
Nadav Kander is a London-based photographer, artist and director renowned for his portraiture and large-format landscape photographs.
Michael Forbes, Kovet.Art
Michael Forbes is an artist living and working between Nottingham and London. His practice explores contemporary racial politics, migration, blackness and whiteness in relation to universal debates on race, class, wealth, history and religion.
Photo London Fair
9 – 12 September 2021
Somerset House,
The Strand
London
WC2R 1LA