Photography at Arco '08

Arco'08: Avant-garde, grand masters and rising young talents provide a panoramic view of photography today. Photography has established itself as part of the international art market today and it features in the world’s main art collections. Global sales at auction hit 75 million euros in 2007, up on 65 million euros the previous year. Global price indexes for photography rose 70% over the last decade, outstripping the 43% rise in prices paid for sculpture and the 15% increase for paintings. What’s more, works by nine photographers passed the million-dollar mark at auction - something that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

Photography has also been on the increase at ARCO and is now so well-established that it is one of the most frequent formats seen at the fair stands. From avant-garde and early 20th century photography, right up to the latest contemporary pieces, the fair is an excellent opportunity to take a look at the history of photography and view some of the leading exponents of this artistic discipline.

Photography from the avant-garde period is on view at ARCO8 at the booths of galleries like 1900*2000, who have brought excellent works by seminal names like Dora Maar and Man Ray. Also worth underscoring is the KICKEN BERLIN stand, featuring only photography, with pieces by Bernd and Hilla Becher and André Kertész, besides a wonderful life-size nude titled Big Nude XIII, Djingis Khan’s Daughter by the German artist Helmut Newton.

Throughout the fair visitors can find work by the most famous exponents of contemporary photography like the members of the German School, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer, plus the Brazilian artists Vik Muniz and Miguel Río Branco, as well as the US photographers Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Spencer Tunick and David LaChapelle and from Japan Nobuyoshi Araki who will show two large works on show at the TAKA ISHII stand from his series Grand Diary of a photo-maniac, inspired by geishas, within his well-known highly charged erotic and provocative aesthetic.

With all of this, ARCO8 is showcasing a wide range of 21st century photography as well as numerous examples of work by the most acclaimed photographers of the 20th century who laid the foundations of photography today.