Photo London 2025: Celebrating A Decade With Icons, Rebels, And Urgent New Voices
Polka, Sebastiao Salgado, Two Weddell seals on an iceberg, Enterprise Island, Antarctic Peninsula, 2004_© Sebastiao Salgado. Courtesy Polka Galerie
Photo London celebrates its 10th anniversary with a special edition presenting a thoughtfully curated selection of the world's most seminal photographers and masters of the craft, juxtaposed with emerging talent pushing the technical and aesthetic boundaries of what constitutes photography. Expect to find a wealth of photographic imagery from all corners of the globe, spanning almost two centuries since the invention of photography by Louise Daguerre in 1830 to the present day. Part of Photo London's success appears to be its ability to capture the zeitgeist of new photographic innovations whilst appreciating the technical skill and legacy of legendary image-makers such as the Magnum photographers.
Photo London is also great at championing photographic talent across generations, cultures and genders, and the 2025 edition features a wealth of talented women photographers and also embraces talent from the LGBTQI+ community.
Photo London's 10th anniversary edition delivers a vibrant and layered celebration of photography's rich history and dynamic present. Returning to Somerset House with signature ambition, the fair strikes a compelling balance between honoring iconic masters and spotlighting bold, socially conscious contemporary work. This year's edition underscores photography's power not just to document but to provoke, reveal, and reimagine.
A major highlight is the tribute to three titans of 20th-century photography—David Bailey, Bill Brandt, and Brassaï. Bailey's rock-and-roll portraits still exude raw charisma and irreverence; Brandt's shadowy compositions remind us why he remains the poet of British postwar imagery; and Brassaï's night-time Paris, ever-seductive and mysterious, continues to seduce new generations of viewers. These luminaries provide a spine of photographic excellence that anchors the fair's historical dimension.
This is also a year where strong women photographers command deserved attention at Photo London. A standout is The Lee Miller Archives who are presenting a curated selection of Miller's war reportage with striking immediacy. Her unflinching images of World War II–which were the focus of the new film LEE starring Kate Winslet at Miller–from the liberation of Buchenwald to her unforgettable self-portrait in Hitler's bathtub, are a timely reminder of photography's role in bearing witness. Mary McCartney, meanwhile, brings a quieter intimacy with portraits that blend celebrity with a painterly softness, while Julia Fullerton-Batten stuns with a visceral, theatrical tableau of Victorian women boxing—an image that punches through the noise with feminist force and visual drama.
Female Boxers by Julia Fullerton-Batten © Julia Fullerton-Batten
Photo London Director, Sophie Parker, comments: 'While we are a photography specific Fair, the works exhibited go far beyond images hung on walls. Photography can include sculpture, painting, performance, fabric, moving image, and even sound, and at Photo London we celebrate photography as an art object in all its forms.'
An emerging theme throughout the fair is photography's response to the climate crisis. Award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's majestic landscapes from his Genesis series blend awe with activism, while Icelandic journalist turned photographer Ragnar Axelsson's haunting black-and-white portraits of life in the Arctic capture not only the region's stark beauty but the existential fragility of its communities and ecosystems. These works demand contemplation, offering not just spectacle but urgent commentary.
Ragnar Axelsson 'Sled Dogs on Sea Ice, Thule', 2010, Arctic Heroes, Archival Print Ragnar Axelsson Courtesy of Qerndu Gallery.
In the Discovery section curated by Charlotte Jansen, Photo London proves its ongoing commitment to diverse, underrepresented voices, with a notably strong showing from LGBTQI photographers. Jesse Glazard's introspective images of queer soldiers in Ukraine are both tender and defiant, exploring identity, resilience, and love under siege. Vivienne Maricevic's archival photographs of the trans community in Times Square in the late 1980s and early 1990s are equally powerful—intimate, gritty portraits that preserve a vibrant yet vulnerable moment in queer history.
Jesse Glazzard, Oleksandr, 2024 © Jesse Glazzard
An overshadowed 'muse' and civil right photographer are foregrounded by Amar Gallery who are presenting the revolutionary work of Dora Maar–often relegated to the role of Picasso's muse and lover, yet an accomplished artist in her own right–with the photography of Stephen Shames, official photographer for the Black Panther party. A poignant juxtaposition in an era when women's rights and racial equality are still threatened by some societies.
Amar Gallery, Black Panther Series © Stephen Shames
As Photo London turns ten, it's clear that the fair is not resting on nostalgia. Instead, it charts a forward-looking path that honors photography's rich lineage while embracing its ever-expanding social and cultural role. The 2025 edition doesn't just celebrate photography—it challenges us to see differently, feel more deeply, and remember what is at stake in the world around us.
© Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
Highlights of a particularly stellar line-up to mark the 10th birthday of Photo London include era-defining fashion photographs and portraits of 20th Century icons including Dylan and Basquiat by David Bailey at Dellasposa (some of Bailey's iconic images of London are also featured in London Lives); a curated selection of vintage photographs by Brassaï and Bill Brandt at Grob Gallery (Geneva); wartime reportage photography from the Lee Miller Archives–including her iconic 1941 image Fire Masks, Downshire Hill–presented at Photo London ahead of Miller's Tate Britain retrospective this autumn; a special display of platinum prints from former Photo London Master of Photography Sebastião Salgado's legendary Genesis series at Polka Galerie (Paris); Ragnar Axelsson's atmospheric monochrome images of man's interaction with animals and the desolate landscape of the arctic presented by Icelandic publisher and gallery Qerndu; Mary McCartney's poignant imagery featured in the London Lives exhibition; Vivienne Maricevic's photographic series documenting the trans community of Times Square in New York City in the late 80s and early 90s at New Discretions gallery, and Jesse Glazzard's brave series of images documenting queer soldiers in Ukraine in the Discovery Section.
Mary McCartney 'Embrace'
Photo London Discovery section Curator, Charlotte Jansen, said: 'The Discovery section at Photo London has always been, for me, the most exciting area of the Fair. As the name implies, it's where you might find things that you've never seen before, which is quite a rarity these days, given our image-saturated culture. I am excited to see a sharp shift away from portraiture towards semi-abstraction and abstraction across many booths this year and to witness the ways contemporary artists are using the camera in a painterly way, like a brush, with captivating results.'
Photo London's 10th anniversary edition proves that photography is an ever evolving art form that in the right hands has the ability to capture the most urgent, poignant, life-affirming images of our lives.
Photo London is at Somerset House until 18th May, 2025.
© David Bailey
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