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Photo L.A. is an international art photography fair held annually in Los Angeles. The fair was established in 1992 [1] and is visited by between ten and eighteen thousand attendees annually. [2] [3]
Photo L.A. was founded in 1992 by photography dealer and gallerist Stephen Cohen. [4] It was initially officially called the Los Angeles International Photographic Print Exposition. [5] The first edition (1991) was a table-top exposition at Butterfield & Butterfield auction house on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. [6] In 2011, Photo L.A. joined artLA Projects, a citywide program of art installations, exhibitions, seminars, and conversations at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. [7] In 2014, it moved to The LA Mart building in Downtown Los Angeles. [8]
In 2018, Claudia James Bartlett became owner and director of Photo L.A. [9] [10] In 2019, Photo L.A. moved to the Barker Hangar, Santa Monica. [11] The hangar’s 35,000 square foot space [12] hosted 60+ galleries, collectives, non-profit organizations, art schools, and booksellers from China, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary, Peru, and more. [13] The opening night honored LA-based artist Jo Ann Callis and benefitted Venice Arts. [14]
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic during June 2020, Photo L.A. hosted its first art photography virtual fair [15] with virtual installation showcases presented by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [16]
Photo L.A. hosts a content series during each fair, with lectures, panel discussions, and docent tours led by professionals in photography. [17]
Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Helen K. Garber is an American photographer known mostly for her black-and-white urban landscapes of cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Paris, Amsterdam and Venice. Her images are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Portland Art Museum, Yale University and the George Eastman House.
Rick Castro is an American photographer, motion picture director, stylist, curator and writer whose work focuses on BDSM, fetish, and desire.
Patrick Ecclesine is an American commercial and fine art photographer and director who has contributed extensively to Vanity Fair.
Alexandra Grant is an American visual artist who examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media. She uses language and exchanges with writers as a source for much of that work. Grant examines the process of writing and ideas based in linguistic theory as it connects to art and creates visual images inspired by text and collaborative group installations based on that process. She is based in Los Angeles.
Gretchen Andrew is an American artist. Her painting practice is mostly described as an exploration of search engine art and virtual reality.
Cole Sternberg is an American visual artist. Sternberg's primary medium is painting. The artist also has works in: photography, sculpture, room installations and film. Cole Sternberg Paintings, a hardcover book released in 2008 features six years of his painting. The 162 page book is listed as the first public release of Sternberg's work. Subsequent work has been exhibited in the United States and Europe.
Alex Prager is an American artist, director, and screenwriter based in Los Angeles.
Helen Anne Molesworth is an American curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.
Anthony Friedkin is an American photographer whose works have chronicled California's landscapes, cities and people. His topics include phenomena such as surf culture, prisons, cinema, and gay culture. Friedkin’s photographs have been exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. His photographs are included in major Museum collections: New York's Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum and others. He is represented in numerous private collections as well. His pictures have been published in Japan, Russia, Europe, and many Fine Art magazines in America.
Siri Kaur is an artist/photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles, where she also serves as associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design. She received an MFA in photography from California Institute of the Arts in 2007, an MA in Italian studies in 2001 from Smith College/Universita’ di Firenze, Florence, Italy, and BA in comparative literature from Smith College in 1998. Kaur was the recipient of the Portland Museum of Art Biennial Purchase Prize in 2011. She regularly exhibits and has had solo shows at Blythe Projects and USC's 3001 galleries in Los Angeles, and group shows at the Torrance Museum of Art, California Institute of Technology, and UCLA’s Wight Biennial. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, art ltd., The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post, and is housed in the permanent collections of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the University of Maine.
Charlotte Cotton is a curator of and writer about photography.
Virtual photography is a form of new media art where images are created by taking screenshots of video games or other virtual worlds. Virtual photography has been featured in physical art galleries around the world. The validity and legality of this art form is sometimes questioned, because virtual photographers are taking photos of artwork created by the game's designers and artists. For the most part, virtual photographers share the same motivations as "real life" photographers, including a desire to capture visually interesting images, preserve memories, and demonstrating technical expertise.
Austin Irving is an American contemporary artist and photographer.
Nancy Baker Cahill is an American new media artist based in Los Angeles, California. She has created immersive augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences, video installations and blockchain projects, oftentimes rooted in drawing. Her work frequently merges technology and public art, drawing upon both feminist land art and the history of political interventions to examine systemic power, body autonomy, civics and climate crisis, among other issues.
Michael Maloney is a Los Angeles-based art appraiser and art dealer. He owned and operated the Michael Maloney Gallery in Santa Monica, California (1985–90) and Maloney Fine Art in Culver City, California (2006–16), and since 1998 has pursued a career as an art appraiser and private dealer in Los Angeles and New York.
Regen Projects is a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles, California.
Amina Cruz is a photographer known for capturing queer punk scenes within the Latinx community and breaking cultural barriers with their work. Cruz captures the intimate moments shared between queer folk and is trying to expand the Latinx identity with their work.
Michael A. Friedman is a former music manager and producer, photographer and author.
The Misfit is a bar and restaurant in Santa Monica, California.