I hope to get to Paris Photo next month, but if I don’t I can save my feet an awful lot of wear by looking at the 276 photo sneak preview on Lens Culture.
I’ve put in for my press pass, but am still waiting for a reply from Paris Photo. It saves a little queuing to do it in advance, but certainly in previous years hasn’t really been necessary, and it would have been almost as quick simply to join the queue to get processed on the spot, as the people on the gate hadn’t been told how to handle those of us who had pre-registered.
Actually the Paris Photo show is really a dealers thing, though it is a great opportunity also to see an enormous amount of photography at first hand. But the more interesting things go on outside, both in the many shows in the Mois de la Photo, but even more in the fringe festival which accompanies it, the Mois de la Photo-OFF , the first of whose openings is this Tuesday.
But the ‘Off‘ really gets into gear on the 8th of November, with 24 openings that night, while Paris Photo is a week later, from 15-18 Nov. I’d like to go to Paris for it all, but it would be expensive, and I’d perhaps miss too much in London. So I’ll have soon to make up my mind which I prefer. The Off is also resolutely a French festival (the main language at Paris Photo is the US dollar), despite having an English director, so I’m happier going to the events with my multilingual wife Linda as my interpreter for when my poor schoolboy French runs out, so some negotiation is going to be necessary.