Florence Bourgeois

I was in charge of management control at [fashion designer] Inès de la Fressange for three years. Then I moved to LVHM to work in management control, finance and operational marketing. After the birth of my fourth child, I took a break to study history of art in order to make a professional transition into the domain of culture. I have a diploma from the Ecole du Louvre and a degree in history of art from the Sorbonne. Then I was general manager of PAD, the Pavilion of Art and Design, for two years before becoming director of Paris Photo.

The first strategy was to ensure that Paris Photo would remain the leading photography fair and increase its visibility and reputation. When I joined, Paris Photo had two editions: one at the Grand Palais and another in Los Angeles [2013-2015]. I had to enhance the Paris Photo brand so that the best galleries and publishers would continue to come to present their projects.

The galleries went digital [and created online viewing rooms]. They had a lower level of activity but developed digital platforms that they might not have adopted before. Now we realize, in hindsight, that nothing replaces a face-to-face relationship with people and explaining an artist’s work to visitors and collectors. But my impression is that galleries could survive, partly thanks to the French government’s support, and had less turnover but fewer expenses. It’s still very complicated for small galleries but my feeling is that they’ve managed to resist.

A contemporary art gallery may have a project to present one year but not another. Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois is here this year [presenting William Wegman and Alain Bublex] but wasn’t here a few years ago. There’s a big rotation of galleries; there are always around 30 new or returning galleries each year. My job is to identify the projects that contemporary art galleries could show at Paris Photo. Another point is that the Grand Palais Éphémère is smaller than the Grand Palais, so we have 30 fewer galleries. When we started working on this edition in the spring, several American galleries were cautious about crossing the Atlantic Ocean. James Danziger, owner of Danziger Gallery, told me that his business was relatively down and that he’d prefer to return next year instead.

First of all, there’s an extremely large price range of works at Paris Photo, from €800 up to €300,000. And I have the impression that prices are holding up. An interesting phenomenon in photography is that more artists are making unique works. Photography is also an entry point into collecting. Young collectors come here because they can afford works for a few thousand euros and start their collection with this easily accessible medium.

Among the very contemporary and recent works, we see photographs appearing like an object. At Ceysson & Bénétière, Aurélie Pétrel’s works [on perforated metal and wood] come off the wall, like a relief. At Esther Woerdehoff, Iris Hutegger’s embroidered works have a relief – black-and-white photographs of mountains that have been embroidered with colour threads using a sewing machine. And at Christophe Gaillard, Letha Wilson’s works are almost architectural in form rather than adhering to the pure concept of photography. Suzanne Tarasieve also has a very interesting stand [showing a heart-shaped installation of plates printed with photos by Juergen Teller]. There’s an increasingly wide range of exploration in the photographic medium. We’re seeing old processes like cyanotypes and daguerrotypes being used by young artists in fascinating ways. For example, Lucas Leffler at Intervalle in the Curiosa section has made analogue ‘mud prints’ after recuperating silver salt from a river polluted with industrial waste.

Women have been increasingly represented at Paris Photo since we started this path four years ago with the culture ministry. Back then, works by women photographers constituted 20 percent of the fair. This year, it’s 34 percent, from Anna Watkins’ nineteenth-century photographs to Mame-Diarra Niang today via Dora Maar. We encouraged galleries to present women artists by telling them that there would be a curated path at the fair and a day of conversations. We’ll continue to give women artists more visibility in this way. The idea isn’t to arrive at 50 percent but to continue this level of commitment and focus so that gradually things progress.

For the moment, we haven’t received any proposals from galleries to show these kinds of works. It’s still a relatively recent phenomenon. We’ll see next year whether NFTs have evolved enormously. Perhaps we’ll have these kinds of projects in the Curiosa section; one mustn’t have a closed mind towards anything. If image-making evolves in this direction, presenting one or two proposals isn’t out of the question.