PHOTO BASEL JUNE 14-19 2022

baudoin lebon_Maya MERCER_ In deep red white America, the Christian god is king_Serie The Parochial Segments

By : Mário de Castro

Coinciding with the international modern and contemporary fair Art Basel, PHOTO BASEL, Switzerland’s first and only art fair dedicated to photography is back to the Volkshaus Basel for its seventh edition.

From its beginnings in 2015, the fair keeps bringing together galleries from around the world, fostering a dialogue between members of the photographic and broader art world communities, attracting collectors, visual art experts and international media.

PHOTO BASEL welcomes 40 international exhibitors from 18 different nations and various continents. Over 550 photographic positions by 130 artists will be exhibited.

PHOTO BASEL 2022 welcomes famous author and curator Sonia Voss as Artistic Director.

Special Projects: Homage to Anita Neugebauer (1916-2012). She founded her gallery “photo art Basel “1976 – and was the first art gallery with the sole focus on fine art photography. Anita’s point of view is curated by her daughter, Claudia Neugebauer and Alessa Widmer.

Back to African Art

Photography based art from the African continent and its diaspora makes a comeback to PHOTO BASEL 2022. Sudanese artist Atong Atem, born in Ethiopia, winner of the La Prairie Art Award, will be presenting a solo show of spectacular portraits and self-portraits that explore the relationship between the intimate and the political, as well as the history of immigration (Mars Gallery, Melbourne, Australia). Melanie Issaka, born in Ghana in 1994 and a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, is showing her first solo show at a fair. Her Blueprints: performative self-portraitsin the form of cyanotypes that explore the position of the black woman’s body in the history of photography and its techniques (Galerie Peter Sillem, Frankfurt, Germany). Burkinabe Saïdou Dicko returns with a selection of his works from the series The Shadowed People. The motif of the shadow, the artist’s main source of inspiration, is both a metaphorical and a political symbol. (Artco Gallery, Aachen, Berlin, and Cape Town). Paris-based Galerie Bonne Espérance, which specializes in South African art, is exhibiting represented for the first time at photo Basel. The gallery is showing a retrospective ofthe artist Jürgen Schadeberg (1931-2020), whose work is closely linked to South Africa’s recent history from the 1940s to post-apartheid. The CAP Prize increases the international visibility and exposure of the winners and builds a high-caliber network for future projects. The 5 winners will be announced again at photo Basel on Friday17 June 2022.

www.photo-basel.com