Women and Photography Take Center Stage at Paris Photo 2019

The female body, an eternal obsession in photography, runs like an underground river through the 2019 edition of Paris Photo. The fair features works ranging from Sarah Moon's 1971 'Woman with Hat' (at England & Co) to Edward Weston's naturalistic nudes, where close inspection reveals leg hair. A vintage print of Weston's 'Girl in Water' at Bruce Silverstein Gallery (New York) was priced over €100,000. Dutch autodidact Bastiaan Woudt (b. 1989), presented by Kahmann Gallery (Amsterdam), offers geometric, almost abstract female figures. Political-conceptual provocations come from Catalan artist Antoni Miralda, whose 'Hazañas Bélicas' (1969) shows bare breasts besieged by toy soldiers (Henrique Faria Fine Arts). Japanese photoperformer Mari Katayama displays her disability in staged scenes with biomorphic cushions (Sage, Paris). Man Ray's perfect buttocks at Gitterman & Von Lintel radiate inner light rather than eroticism. Tim Walker's baroque nudes at Michael Hoppen Gallery include geishas riding Gen H4 flying machines. Pixy Liao's magnifying-glass kiss and glued-together lovers at Blindspot Gallery explode in deafening silence. Lin Zhipeng's Instagram-style vignettes at Akio Nagasawa feature a girl's derrière labeled 'fragile', capturing the Zeitgeist on the backside.