PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai is Asia Pacific’s leading fair dedicated to photography and digital artworks. This year’s edition brings together a strong line-up of galleries from across China; a point of convergence, providing a platform for the most exciting emerging voices in Chinese contemporary photography whilst showcasing international artists that played a key role in shaping visual culture in the region.  

• Among the established galleries, Three Shadows + 3 Gallery presents works by Daidō Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Koo Bohnchang and Hisaji Hara. Daidō Moriyama’s work is recognised for its candid approach to the urban landscape and its inhabitants, while Hisaji Hara’s meticulous portraiture, inspired by Balthus’s painterly practice, places his subjects in a dreamlike narrative, somewhere on the trajectory between imagination and reality.

• see+ Gallery (Beijing, Shenzhen), presents a series of contemporary photographers, including Gabriela Morawetz, Till Leeser, Yan Ming, Lu Yanpeng and Wang Juyan. The gallery also focuses on two critical figures of the post-photographic era: Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor, whose works invoke complex symbolisms through photomontage and post-production techniques, creating precisely altered photographic realities.

• Bringing together the best of Eastern and Western contemporary art, Matthew Liu Fine Arts (Shanghai) exhibits three fine artists whose works are increasingly resonant with Chinese collectors and audiences: Candida Höfer, Vik Muniz, and Yang Yongliang.

• GALLERIA CONTINUA (San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana, Roma, São Paulo, Paris, Dubai) returns with a solo presentation of new works by Giovanni Ozzola. Ozzola, who specialises in capturing the variability of light, explores concepts of time, infinity and existence in his works.

• A Thousand Plateaus Art Space (Chengdu) showcases the works of Li Lang, Chen Qiulin, and Chen Xiaoyi, three key figures in Southwestern Chinese contemporary photography. Their perceptive and meticulous practices demonstrate a keen insight into social issues, as they consider China’s changing lifestyles and landscapes. DUMONTEIL (Shanghai, Paris) presents three French contemporary artists, including Hugo Deverchère, whose most recent work, La Isla de Las Siete Ciudades, reconstructs the origins of a group of islands on the Iberian coast that were believed to exist in the 15th and 16th centuries but have since disappeared from maps.

• BONIAN SPACE (Beijing), established in 2019, presents the works of important figures in 20th century Chinese photography, including Luo Bonian and Jin Shisheng, who were highly prolific in the 1930s, capturing the daily life of China’s urban centres and tracing the history of these rapidly growing cities.

• EAST GALLERY (Nanjing), which takes oriental aesthetics as a starting point, presents Dong Wensheng, Sun Xiaozhou, and other artists who explore the experience of traditional Chinese culture.

• EYECANDIES (Shanghai), a hub for emerging artists, launches three young female photography artists, Li Yushi, Yu Ruojie, and Winnie Tse. Li Yushi’s intimate portraits frame questions of gender and sexuality with a particular focus on the role of the gaze, whilst Yu Ruojie tests the limits of the camera lens, as she focuses on creating photographic abstraction with minimal post-production. 193 Gallery (Paris) showcases the vibrant and powerful works of Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu and Moroccan photographer Hassan Hajjaj.

• Fisheye Gallery (Paris) brings several emerging photographers, such as Léa Habourdin, works with drawings and photographs exploring fields such as ethology, applied science research and botanics, and Delphine Diallo, whose approach to portraiture shows an empathy and responsibility in her role as photographer, as well as a willingness to empower the subject

• PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai has also invited ALiCE, a virtual human, to serve as its official ambassador with the aim of co-creating a video surrounding "reality and imagination" and exploring the future of video art through a series of creative visuals.

PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai returns to the Shanghai Exhibition Centre on April 20-23, 2023.

Image Credits: 

© Dong Wensheng, Bamboo and Stone 2, 2021, Courtesy of East Gallery
© Hassan Hajjaj, Puma Veil, 2006, Courtesy of 193 Gallery
© Li Lang, 2011.12.31, 2022, Courtesy of A Thousand Plateaus Art Space
© Giovanni Ozzola, where are you?, 2021, Courtesy GALLERIA CONTINUA
© Hisaji Hara, A Study of "Because Cathy taught him what she learnt", 2010, Courtesy of Three Shadows +3 Gallery
© Delphine Diallo, The Oracle, 2020, Courtesy of Fisheye Gallery
© Léa Habourdin, Images-forêts: des mondes en extension, 2019-2022, Courtesy of Fisheye Gallery