Fairly Unusual: Photography Fairs in 2020
Courtesy of Sven Eisenhut and Photo Basel
With text by Maha Alsharif
At a time of unprecedented challenges, uncertainty is difficult to adapt to and it is unclear how to plan for tomorrow. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to industries worldwide, accelerating the shift toward digitization in response to new restrictions on public gatherings. Arguably, these changes have affected the cultural sector most, forcing photography fairs and festivals to find ways to foster a sense of community online while sustaining the industry.
Fotofest celebrated the launch of the 2020 Biennial with a public opening of the central exhibition, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, in Houston during the first week of March. Unbeknownst to the organizers, however, the accompanying year-round program would shortly be interrupted due to COVID-19, forcing festival organizers to rethink how they would honor their commitments to participants and audience members alike while adhering to new safety regulations. Fotofest’s public events paused for a brief time, before re-emerging in a new, more sustainable, and hybrid format that is part virtual, part in-person. Live events became accessible online with on-demand viewing options such as the Creative Conversations series, while exhibitions reopened in galleries to individuals and small groups, and were later taken outdoors with events like Public Life: Distance and Diaspora, which showcases a series of large-scale vinyl photo banners installed on the street-facing façades of Houston’s art district. The exhibition not only responds to the ongoing pandemic, but also to ongoing social issues around the themes of social activism, visibility, and solidarity, with works by four artists who, by documenting geographically specific traditions, cultures, communities, and sociopolitical issues, reveal how “the local’’ is linked to “the global,” thus highlighting the interconnected nature of the African diaspora.
The lead-up to Photo Basel 2020 was riddled with uncertainty as travel restrictions were implemented due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Europe. Rather than canceling or postponing the 2020 edition, however, the director of Photo Basel, Sven Eisenhut and his energetic team opted to hold the world’s first completely virtual photography fair by featuring online forty selected exhibitors in addition to a virtual public program. Being a dynamic organization committed to innovation, Photo Basel partnered with Berlin start- up Kunstmatrix and offered exhibitors curatorial support, successfully delivering a fully immersive and interactive environment that continued with a second virtual edition in December.
Yet, neither the pandemic nor the success of the virtual edition deterred the organizers of Photo Basel from wanting to return to the physical model. When an invitation came from Positions Berlin to bring Photo Basel to Berlin Art Week, Eisenhut literally jumped on a bus and personally helped galleries transport their works to the exhibition site at Tempelhofer airfield. Speaking on Photo Basel/Berlin, he explains, “it was an incredible adventure that not only paid off for many of our participating galleries, but also helped us to gain fantastic insight on how to produce a physical art fair despite or during the pandemic.”
In May, Photo London announced that the fair would be postponed until October with plans to coincide with Frieze Art Fair. It would also be the first time that the fair would leave Somerset House and instead, would be housed in a semi-permanent tent at Gray’s Inn Gardens, where social distancing and safety rules would apply. Plans for a physical fair changed at the end of the summer with the 109 participating galleries exhibiting in the first-ever solely digital edition of the fair on Artsy.
The Discovery section of Photo London saw the fair debut of Egypt’s only private gallery dedicated to photography, Tintera. Established in 2019 with a vibrant exhibition space in Cairo and an office in London, Tintera found the opportunity affirming and timely to expand its reach internationally. In light of the circumstances, however, the gallery preferred the idea of a digital fair and with short notice, designed their digital booth accordingly, bringing the works of seven artists that included Ibrahim Ahmed and Sara Sallam. The two-week- long digital fair attracted over 28,000 online visitors and boosted confidence in online sales. Nonetheless, it was a strange experience for galleries, as Zein Khalifa, co-founder of Tintera, explains, “you are preparing images, artist statements, press releases and doing all the work for Artsy, but you are doing this without an audience, so you are not really sure who is receiving it.” Although users have the option to communicate with exhibitors, the gallery used complementary tools like social media and personal communication, as is common practice in the arts, to gauge impressions and to make up for the lack of dialogue. Tintera’s experience concluded with a sense of excitement and normalcy, with artist Ibrahim Ahmed shortlisted for the Emerging Photographer of the Year Award, adding to a prominent collection.
Due to early delays, Madrid’s annual photography festival, PHoto España (PHE) extended the festival by a month. It allowed spaces time to prepare and open as they deemed safe, and gave visitors a chance to experience more of the eighty-five spread-out exhibitions and programs either in person or through the new digital platform. The effects of the pandemic inspired PHE desde mi balcón (“PHE from my balcony”), a social media activation that asked residents to share photographs of the city from their balconies and windows.
The festival’s exhibitions spoke to a range of new and recurring themes such as displacement, as seen in Casa Árabe’s Displacements: Yemen Diasporas. The physical exhibition combined personal accounts from Yemeni artists Shaima Al-Tamimi and Thana Faroq against the backdrop of the multifaceted history of migration in the country in connection to the current climate and how it shapes contemporary Yemeni identity at home and globally.
The theme for Breda Photo was The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, a timeless apropos that proved especially relevant in 2020. Change for the good and bad is constant throughout history, however, seldom is there a dramatic change collectively experienced around the world at the same time, leaving humanity uncertain. Though the events are reported, documented, and analyzed from a multitude of perspectives, each person finds truth in their individual experience. In A Sacred Space Oddity (2020), Tanya Habjouqa, shares her truth while challenging the mainstream narrative of life under occupation in Palestine. Commissioned by Breda Photo, the transmedia project distinguishes between the reality and image of the occupation, as the artist reveals the untold narrative behind the image, and thus a different reality.
The world of photography coped with uncertainty by adopting a new approach that continues to value interaction and conversation, whether through technology or in person. Photography fairs and events still managed to bring the larger community together, encouraged galleries, artists, and collectors to push through, and sparked conversations about issues that may have become overshadowed by the pandemic. With a new normal upon us, there is certainly room for improvement, and a more sophisticated hybrid of digital and physical is possibly the way forward.