![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/BFA_53910_7861579.jpg\")
The 2026 Photography Show saw record attendance at its VIP preview on April 22. Matt Borkowski\/BFA.com<\/p>\nThe 2026 Photography Show saw record attendance at its VIP preview on April 22. Matt Borkowski\/BFA.com<\/p>\n
For photography collectors and enthusiasts, The Photography Show, organized by AIPAD, is one of the most important events for photophiles on the North American calendar. Gathering 80 domestic and international galleries and creative spaces dedicated to the medium, the fair opened to VIPs on April 22 in the elegant interiors of the Park Avenue Armory. The audience for this fair may not always overlap with the broader art world, but is nonetheless deeply engaged and dedicated to adhering to a level of connoisseurship and commitment that some might read as zealous. Record attendance and early sales easily dispelled any claims that photography is less serious as an art form or a dead medium in an age of image overexposure.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast night was a spectacular night for photography! We had record VIP attendance, with an especially strong turnout from museums,\u201d AIPAD executive director Lydia Melamed Johnson<\/a> told Observer, adding that this year\u2019s exhibitors were thrilled with the dynamic audience that bought decisively across categories and price points. \u201cIt was especially encouraging to see such a broad demographic of collectors, from established connoisseurs to a new generation of engaged, first-time buyers discovering the medium with enthusiasm and confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n The Photography Show reflects the medium\u2019s extraordinary breadth with its displays ranging from early photographic experiments and camera-less processes to iconic works by defining figures such as Ansel Adams<\/a>, Dorothea Lange<\/a> and Brassa\u00ef<\/a>, alongside contemporary titans like Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado and Stephen Shore and a new generation of artists pushing photography into digital, video and installation-based practices. Entering the fair is, for both connoisseurs and newcomers, a journey through the evolution of photography as both an artistic and documentary medium, and through the enduring impulse toward visual storytelling that has always defined it.<\/p>\n Although photojournalism today cannot rely on the institutional support of the Magnum agency era, photography remains a tool of intensified vision, sharpening our awareness of the present, drawing attention to what unfolds around us and creating a record of history as it is written.<\/p>\n Among the early institutional acquisitions, the Museum of the City of New York purchased works from Stephen Daiter Gallery and Daniel\/ Oliver. \u201cThe portfolio of Dawoud Bey\u2019s portraits of Harlem residents is an exemplary representation of a defining New York community,\u201d MCNY curator Sean Corcoran told Observer. \u201cOur mission is to tell the story of New York City and the communities, so this year we acquired this, along with a series of Augustus Frederick Sherman portraits documenting the last great wave of immigration through Ellis Island, at the beginning of the 20th Century. The work resonates with the museum\u2019s mission, and the immigration story is at its core.\u201d<\/p>\n In the booth of Santa Fe-based Monroe Gallery<\/a> of Photography, whose mission is to champion precisely those images from the 20th and 21st Centuries that exist at the singular intersection of art and journalism, is a powerful wall ensemble: two photographic portraits by Ron Haviv<\/a> of figures who have already become emblematic of our troubled era\u2014Mamdani and Zelensky\u2014are paired with recent works capturing, in unfiltered black and white, the silent violence of ICE raids across the country as well as the vital pushback of protests in Minneapolis and beyond. Included are dramatic images by Ashley Gilbertson<\/a> documenting ICE actions in Chicago; his series Monsters on Halloween captures agents driving through neighborhoods in Niles, Illinois, for hours, stopping and detaining landscapers and construction workers as residents emerge from their homes to film and protest. Mark Peterson<\/a> documents ICE protests at 26 Federal Plaza in New York, and Ryan Vizzions<\/a> crystallizes into an image that already feels historical, capturing the memorials following the killing of Renee Good<\/a> by ICE in Minneapolis. The people portrayed here are shown as vulnerable within broader systems and dynamics, yet resilient in the strength of community.<\/p>\n These are \u201cimages that are embedded in our collective consciousness and which form a shared visual heritage for human society,\u201d founder Sid Monroe<\/a> told Observer, when asked about the significance of photojournalism in an era of manipulated media. Also in the booth is a group of images from Din\u00e9 (Navajo) photographer Eugene Tapahe<\/a>\u2019s \u201cJingle Dress Project,\u201d which aims to bring global attention to Native American issues, including land acknowledgment, women\u2019s rights and, most urgently, the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). A powerful image of fierce Native American sisters standing in the snow against a bright blue sky, dressed in traditional, colorful clothing\u2014resolute and determined as they face the unknown horizons of their culture\u2014is an absolute standout of this edition.<\/p>\n Completing the presentation are vintage photographs, including iconic shots by Franco Vaccaro<\/a>, ranging from Enzo Ferrari<\/a> and Ferrari cars to portraits of contemporary masters such as Alexander Calder<\/a> in his studio. Notably, all works in Monroe\u2019s booth\u2014whether historically significant or iconic\u2014remain relatively accessible, with most priced between $3,500 and $7,500.<\/p>\n What makes the fair accessible more broadly is the transparency of pricing, with dealers openly listing values for each work\u2014a clarity that undoubtedly helps drive faster sales, even for artists also seen on the art fair circuit. In the early hours, Yancey Richardson Gallery<\/a> placed Marilyn Minter<\/a>\u2019s True Blue (2022) and Tania Franco Klein<\/a>\u2019s The Waiting from the series Positive Disintegration (2016). \u201cThe fair has had an amazing turnout, and the quality of work in the room is very high,\u201d Yancey Richardson told Observer. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a great response to our presentation this year from museum curators who have come in from all over the U.S. with particular interest in the work of Larry Sultan, Tania Franco Klein and Mitch Epstein.\u201d<\/p>\n The fair does not lack historical gems, even as dealers tend to present works at considerably lower price points than those typically seen at other art fairs for artists already firmly in the canon. At Scott Nichols Gallery<\/a>, a mid-1950s print of Dorothea Lange\u2019s iconic Migrant Mother sits alongside other works in the $6,000-7,800 range. Works by Ansel Adams are also on view, with later prints priced around $7,800 and a rarer 1940 print reaching $75,000.<\/p>\n Robert Klein Gallery<\/a>\u2019s offerings range from early pioneers of the medium, like Berenice Abbott<\/a>, to Brassa\u00ef\u2019s images capturing the Parisian golden age, and Walker Evans<\/a>\u2019s 1930s documentation of rural poverty across the U.S. as part of the FSA program. Here, too, prices remain below $10,000 despite these works\u2019 historical weight. The gallery pairs works by these masters with contemporary perspectives, including a timely focus on one of Iran\u2019s leading photographers, Shadi Ghadirian<\/a>, whose work examines life in post-revolutionary Iran and the tensions shaping women\u2019s identities between tradition and modernity. On view here are images from her Qajar series (1998), each featuring a woman against painted backdrops inspired by 19th-century Qajar-era portraiture (1786-1925) and paired with anachronistic modern objects\u2014a Pepsi can, a boom box or a bicycle\u2014which are prohibited. Drawing on her experience at the National Museum of Photography in Tehran, Ghadirian juxtaposes historical conventions with contemporary constraints, revealing shifting boundaries of visibility, identity and social freedom. Also notable is the pairing between rare works by Francesca Woodman<\/a> and the contemporary photography of Lebanese artist Rania Matar<\/a>, whose images of girls and young women coming of age reveal a similar performative negotiation of visibility and exposure.<\/p>\n On the historical side, several galleries are presenting photographic experiments by Man Ray<\/a>, following the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s recently closed exhibition \u201cMan Ray: When Objects Dream,\u201d which highlighted his pioneering role in camera-less photography and his broader redefinition of the medium\u2019s artistic potential. Among them, Edwynn Houk Gallery<\/a> has a rare rayograph priced over $1 million, alongside a solarized self-portrait from the 1930s priced at $75,000.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s fair welcomes, for the first time, Leica Store & Gallery<\/a>, which in 2026 is celebrating 50 years of Leica Galleries worldwide. The booth brings together a dynamic group of 13 photographers\u2014from established masters to contemporary storytellers\u2014spanning documentary, fine art and cultural narratives. The presentation highlights photography as a medium for humanistic storytelling, truth and human connection, while also showcasing the possibilities of technical excellence. \u201cBy bridging legacy and contemporary perspectives, we\u2019re proud to share how photographers continue to interpret the world through a Leica lens with AIPAD\u2019s engaged audience,\u201d Mike Giannattasio<\/a>, president of Leica Camera, Inc., North America, told Observer.<\/p>\n Additional historical names are presented with a similarly intergenerational approach in the booth of Gitterman Gallery<\/a>, where a tightly curated selection moves across photography\u2019s many registers\u2014from document to revelation\u2014anchored by Irving Penn<\/a>\u2019s Milkman, New York (1951), a platinum-palladium print offered at $90,000, alongside a poetic nocturnal landscape by Robert Adams<\/a> ($30,000) and rare vintage views of the Bauhaus in Dessau by Iwao Yamawaki<\/a> ($7,500 and $4,800). Central to the booth is also a group of contemporary experimental works by Dan Estabrook<\/a> ($4,200-7,500), whose practice, fresh from his recent exhibition at the gallery, explicitly revisits early photographic processes to probe the medium\u2019s more mystical dimension. Together, the grouping suggests a lineage that runs beneath photography\u2019s accepted role as a mirror of the real: a persistent drive to move beyond surface description toward what might be called a \u201csur-reality\u201d\u2014an invisible layer of meaning accessible through the photographer\u2019s cultivated eye, as the mechanical medium becomes capable of revealing depths otherwise unseen.<\/p>\n Another particularly compelling discovery at this year\u2019s fair comes through the partnership with the MUUS Collection\u2014a leading American collection of 20th-century photography dedicated to preserving, researching and bringing to light works from the archives it owns and represents. At AIPAD, the collection presents a focused tribute to Rosalind Fox Solomon<\/a>, one year after her passing, through a series of uncannily revelatory images that move between the mystical and the critical, capturing the everyday with an emphasis on raw, unvarnished human presence. Characterized by a direct, often confrontational approach, these works reveal an America of contradictions while also conveying the richness of its diverse communities and their rituals, resulting in psychologically charged, at times unsettling portraits that oscillate between documentary and something more interior\u2014almost existential, if not spiritual.<\/p>\n At the core of the presentation is the question that gives the booth its title\u2014\u201dWhat Is Life?\u201d\u2014probing the contradictions and vulnerabilities of the body as it is shaped by history and social circumstance, but also the depth of its interiority, suspended between a desire for transcendence and spontaneous expressions of spirituality. This tension emerges powerfully in her Chapalingas series, made in Mexico, where Solomon turns her lens on a group of young women, capturing not a social type but the fragile, shifting space between self-presentation and exposure.<\/p>\n Newly introduced, Focal Point is a solo presentation sector highlighting galleries and artists focused on lens-based photography that continue to expand creatively and expressively the collective understanding of what photography can be. Among the most compelling presentations in the section, Somad<\/a>\u2014a femme- and queer-led independent art space and artist residency program based in New York\u2014is presenting the staged, articulated photographic work of Yi Hsuan Lai<\/a>, the Taiwanese-born, New York-based artist and its 2025 artist-in-residence. Through a dynamic interplay of sculptural and staged photography, Lai\u2019s works blur the boundaries between image and object, between the digital and the physical, in an exercise of embodiment and disembodiment that probes the limits of materiality, perception and representation. Characterized by an intriguing sense of virtual tactility, these images are deeply physical, both in the performative and staging acts they imply.<\/p>\n Lai operates with found materials\u2014mostly repurposed rubber and other textured fabric remnants salvaged from everyday life\u2014combined to evoke bodies in states of transformation. Through gestures of repair, reassembly and recontextualization, these discarded fragments find new meaning and presence, reflecting a crafting process that parallels the artist\u2019s own construction of identity. Repositioning photography as a sculptural medium (physically constructed and labor-intensive), these works are offered at accessible price points ranging from $3,750 to $10,000, even as they deliver a timely reflection on the very essence of our relationship with images and with our physical and sensorial understanding of reality and identity through them.<\/p>\n Also in Focal Point, LAS Contemporary<\/a> from Nashville is presenting the work of Chrissy Lush<\/a>, whose photographic practice similarly exceeds the limits of the two-dimensional image, turning single shots into extended cinematic narration. Her carefully staged scenes examine the silent tensions embedded in human relationships, focusing on moments when intimacy and vulnerability surface within domestic environments, where social performance can slip into more immediate, unfiltered psychological expression. Set in bedrooms, kitchens, backyards, driveways and even cemeteries, Lush uses photography as a tool of psychological and anthropological inquiry, tracing the dynamics between individuals and the spaces they inhabit and exploring the collision between interior experience and outward performance.<\/p>\n A similar slippage of photography toward performance and video\u2014used to interrogate human behavior between societal control and instinctive reaction\u2014emerges in JJ Levine<\/a>\u2019s Alone Time series. In brightly colored, staged scenes, Levine captures couples engaged in intimate moments of domestic life, revealing shifting gender dynamics within a rapidly changing social landscape. What is particularly compelling is that each \u201ccouple\u201d is in fact a single model, appearing as both male and female within the same frame. By demonstrating the body\u2019s capacity to convincingly embody multiple genders, the work challenges binary notions of gender presentation, suggesting instead its fluidity and multiplicity. Technically, the images are constructed through slide film photography that is later scanned, layered and digitally collaged to create the illusion of two figures, though the bodies themselves remain unaltered\u2014transformed only through makeup, costume and pose, further emphasizing gender as a performative and malleable construct.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s fair also features several new entries, adding to its significant cultural and geographical diversity. Worth noting is the debut of Rolf Art<\/a> from Buenos Aires, presenting a curated booth that brings together two pioneers of Argentine and Latin American photography: Sara Facio<\/a> (1932-2024) and Alicia D\u2019Amico (1933-2001). The presentation revisits three of their landmark collaborative photographic essays\u2014Humanario (1977), Retratos y Autorretratos (1974) and Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires (1968)\u2014bringing to the fair a series of revealing, psychologically charged portraits, including intimate images of Jorge Luis Borges<\/a>, alongside glimpses of a postwar Buenos Aires at a moment of cultural flourishing. The booth is further enriched by a carefully selected group of works by Adriana Lestido<\/a>, their key disciple, who has carried forward their legacy through iconic series such as Madre e hija de Plaza de Mayo (1982), Mujeres presas (1991-1993) and Metropolis (1988-1999). Within the curated ensemble, her work offers a stark counterpoint, documenting the deepening social fractures and growing poverty that emerged in the decades that followed, effectively tracing, within a single booth, the broader trajectory of modern Argentina.<\/p>\n Another standout presentation is by Andorra-based Galeria Alta<\/a>, which is staging the U.S. debut of the poetic images of Ghanaian artist Carlos Idun-Tawiah<\/a>. Characterized by a uniquely vibrant use of color, these cinematic works capture with lyricism and psychological intensity the full emotional range of fictionalized portraits of lovers and friends. Titled Memories Between Earth and Sky, Idun-Tawiah conceived this collaborative body of work with his mother, based on conversations about her love story with his late father, from their first encounter to her final farewell at his grave. These poetic images, as the artist suggests, are an attempt to resist the erasure of time, making visible the fragile memory of a largely unphotographed love.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/A076-042226_Erica_Price.jpg\")
AIPAD\u2019s The Photography Show this year brings 80 galleries and creative spaces dedicated to the medium to the Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Erica Prince<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Monsters-on-Halloween.jpg\")
Ashley Gilbertson, Monsters on Halloween, 2025. \u00a9 Ashley Gilbertson | Courtesy Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/17_SaltFlats_22.jpg\")
Eugene Tapahe, Togetherness, Sisters, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, Goshute and Timpanogos, 2023. \u00a9 Eugene Tapahe | Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/imgi_2_robertkleingallery-shadi-ghadirian-qajar-14-1998.jpg\")
Shadi Ghadirian, Qajar #14, 1998. Courtesy Robert Klein Gallery<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/imgi_47_590403584_18540235411020828_994504602832597155_n.jpg\")
Man Ray, Autoportrait, solarization, 1930. Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/imgi_2_661523334_18577495561014375_8637934104180766322_n.jpg\")
Rosalind Fox Solomon, What is Life? New York, NY, USA, 1985. \u00a9 Rosalind Fox Solomon – Courtesy MUUS Collection<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Yi-Hsuan-Lai_Cave_2024.jpg\")
Yi Hsuan Lai, Cave, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Somad<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1E2A0082-v1.jpg\")
Chrissy Lush presented by LAS Contemporary. Photo: Chris Austin<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/imgi_14_154e68bc96f15108d77e142faf457eb9j.jpg\")
Carlos Idun-Tawiah, Lost in her Charm, Saint Louis, Senegal, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Galer\u00eda Alta