Overview
Paris Photo 2024, held at the spectacular Grand Palais Éphémère from November 7-10, delivered a powerful statement about the vitality and growing sophistication of the photography market. This year's edition brought together 195 carefully selected galleries from 31 countries, creating an unparalleled platform for photographic art that spanned nearly two centuries of image-making. Over the course of four days, an estimated 65,000 visitors—including collectors, curators, artists, and photography enthusiasts—descended upon the temporary structure on the Champ de Mars, reaffirming Paris Photo's status as the world's most important photography fair.
The fair's success extends far beyond mere attendance figures. Paris Photo has systematically elevated photography's position within the broader art market, challenging the historical hierarchy that placed painting and sculpture above lens-based media. This year's edition, under the artistic direction of curator Clothilde Morette, particularly emphasized photography's role in addressing contemporary issues, from climate change to social justice, while also celebrating the medium's rich historical traditions. The fair's thoughtful curation and diverse programming created an environment where vintage daguerreotypes could be discussed with the same reverence as cutting-edge digital experimentations.
The Grand Palais Éphémère itself proved an inspired venue choice, its soaring glass and steel architecture providing abundant natural light that showcased photographic prints to optimal effect. The building's temporary nature—constructed to host events while the historic Grand Palais undergoes renovation—seemed particularly appropriate for a medium that has always grappled with questions of permanence, reproduction, and the passage of time.
Highlights
The commercial success of Paris Photo 2024 was evident from the opening hours, with numerous galleries reporting exceptional sales that exceeded their expectations. Vintage prints by twentieth-century masters commanded particular attention and premium prices. Works by Helmut Newton, whose provocative fashion photography redefined the genre in the 1970s and 1980s, found eager buyers in the six-figure range. Several galleries, including Hamiltons Gallery from London and Fahey/Klein Gallery from Los Angeles, reported selling multiple Newton prints within the first day, with prices ranging from $120,000 to $350,000 depending on the image, print date, and size.
Richard Avedon's portraits and fashion photography similarly generated intense interest, with his iconic images of cultural figures and his groundbreaking "In the American West" series proving particularly sought-after. One gallery reported selling a rare vintage print of Avedon's 1955 portrait of Marilyn Monroe for $280,000, while his oversized Western portraits commanded prices approaching $400,000. The sustained market for Avedon, nearly two decades after his death, reflects his enduring influence and the recognition of his work as both art historical significance and investment-grade material.
Contemporary photography also showed remarkable strength, with several living artists achieving sold-out booths. Wolfgang Tillmans, whose abstract experiments and documentary observations have profoundly influenced contemporary photography, saw strong sales across his diverse output. His large-scale chromogenic prints, which blur the boundaries between abstraction and representation, were particularly popular with younger collectors, with works selling in the $40,000 to $150,000 range.
South African photographer Zanele Muholi, whose powerful portraits of Black LGBTQ+ individuals have garnered international acclaim and institutional recognition, experienced exceptional demand. Multiple galleries featuring Muholi's work reported selling out their inventory, with prices for her silver gelatin prints ranging from $25,000 to $75,000. This strong market performance reflects both the artistic significance of Muholi's work and the broader market's growing appreciation for diverse voices and perspectives.
Tyler Mitchell, the young American photographer who made history as the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover, also generated significant excitement. His dreamy, utopian images of Black youth sold briskly, with prices for his larger prints reaching $60,000—a remarkable achievement for an artist still in his twenties.
Market Analysis
One of the most notable trends at Paris Photo 2024 was the surging interest in African photography, both historical and contemporary. Galleries specializing in African photography, including Addis Fine Art from Addis Ababa and London, and Afriart Gallery from Kampala, reported extraordinary sales and sustained collector interest throughout the fair. This enthusiasm reflects a broader art market trend toward diversification and a genuine desire to understand photography's global histories beyond the traditional European and American canon.
Malick Sidibé's joyous black-and-white photographs of Malian youth culture in the 1960s and 1970s continued to appreciate, with vintage prints now regularly commanding $40,000 to $100,000. Similarly, works by Seydou Keïta, Samuel Fosso, and younger artists like Aida Muluneh found eager collectors willing to pay premium prices for museum-quality works. This market segment appears to have moved beyond the "emerging" category into established blue-chip territory, with major museums worldwide actively acquiring these artists.
Another fascinating development was the fair's embrace of experimental and hybrid photographic practices. The boundaries of what constitutes "photography" continue to expand, with artists incorporating artificial intelligence, digital manipulation, three-dimensional printing, and mixed-media approaches into their work. Rather than viewing these innovations with skepticism, collectors showed remarkable openness to these new directions. Several galleries featuring AI-assisted photography reported strong sales, suggesting that the market is evolving alongside artistic practice.
The presence of photo-based NFTs and digital works, while still a small percentage of overall sales, indicated that the photography market is cautiously exploring blockchain-based authentication and digital scarcity. However, traditional prints—particularly vintage prints with clear provenance—remained the dominant force in terms of both volume and value.
What to Watch
The institutional presence at Paris Photo 2024 deserves special attention as an indicator of photography's elevated status within the art world. Representatives from major museums including the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum were actively acquiring works throughout the fair. This institutional validation serves multiple functions: it provides market stability, confirms art historical significance, and signals to collectors that photography is a serious collecting category deserving of museum-level attention.
The Centre Pompidou, which has been systematically building one of the world's great photography collections, made several significant acquisitions, including works by contemporary artists addressing themes of memory and migration. The Tate Modern focused particularly on emerging African photographers, continuing its commitment to diversifying its permanent collection. These institutional purchases often provide a floor for the market, as collectors recognize that museum-quality works become increasingly scarce once institutions begin actively collecting an artist.
The presence of institutional buyers also raises important questions about the relationship between the market and the museum. While museums can lend prestige and historical legitimacy to artists and movements, they also rely on galleries and collectors to support artists' practices and preserve works until they enter public collections. This symbiotic relationship was on full display at Paris Photo, where curators, dealers, and collectors engaged in substantive conversations about photography's past, present, and future.
Outlook
Paris Photo 2024 has conclusively demonstrated that photography is not merely a segment of the art market but rather a dynamic and rapidly evolving field with its own collectors, institutions, and market dynamics. The fair's success reflects several converging trends: the maturation of photography as a collecting category, the medium's particular relevance to contemporary concerns about image culture and representation, and the growing recognition that photography's diverse global histories deserve serious attention.
Looking ahead, several factors suggest continued growth for the photography market. First, photography remains more accessible than painting or sculpture at comparable quality levels, allowing collectors to acquire museum-quality works at price points that would be impossible in other media. This accessibility encourages new collectors to enter the market and build serious collections.
Second, the medium's historical depth—spanning from the earliest daguerreotypes of the 1840s to cutting-edge digital work being created today—provides extraordinary opportunities for collectors to explore different periods, styles, and approaches within a single collecting focus.
Third, photography's global nature and its central role in contemporary visual culture ensure that new generations of artists will continue to push the medium in unexpected directions, creating ongoing opportunities for discovery and collection.
As Paris Photo 2024 conclusively demonstrated, photography is not just on the rise—it has firmly established itself as an essential component of the contemporary art market, with its own sophisticated ecosystem of galleries, collectors, institutions, and market infrastructure. The future looks exceptionally bright for this medium that has spent over a century and a half documenting, questioning, and reimagining our world.