A spokesperson for Creo, which operates the contemporary art fair dedicated to photo-based works, digital art and new media, told ARTNews that market conditions and consultations with “our community of galleries and partners” led to the decision.

“Our priority is mounting a dynamic and high-quality event, so we feel it is best to hold the fair once market conditions improve,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In the meantime, we remain committed to PHOTOFAIRS and to its role as a vital platform and convenor for the photography and contemporary art community.”

The debut of Photofairs New York last year at the Javits Center included the participation of 56 galleries from over 20 cities around the world. VIP attendees included Whitney Museum curator Rujeko Hockley, Inditex chair Marta Ortega Pérez, actor Chris Rock, actress Jane Seymour, English artist Zoë Buckman, and photographer Joel Meyerowitz.

Photofairs New Yor was founded by Scott Gray, the founder and CEO of Creo Arts. Gray also founded Photofairs Shanghai and serves as CEO of exhibition consultancy firm Angus Montgomery Arts.

In a previous interview with ARTnews, Gray acknowledged that Covid-19 was one of the challenges to bringing a Photofair to New York, as well as finding the right venue in an increasingly packed international art fair calendar.

The spokesperson from Creo Arts confirmed to ARTnews that Photofairs Shanghai would still take place in 2025, after it held its most recent edition with 46 exhibitors at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre in April.

The variety of works exhibited by 56 galleries from more than 20 cities around the world included narrative photography, historical printmaking, as well as interactive installations. In addition to being the founder of Photofairs New York, Scott Gray is also the founder and CEO of Creo Arts, founder of Photofairs Shanghai as well as CEO of Angus Montgomery Arts. The exhibition consultancy firm also launched the art fairs ART SG in Singapore in January, and Tokyo Gendai in July.

Gray spoke to ARTnews about why it was important for him have a show devoted to photo-based works and digital art in New York, the growing appetite among collectors and institutions, as well as his favorite booths.

“It’s been in the long-term in the planning to come to New York,” Gray told ARTnews. “It’s such an important market for photography, for contemporary art, New York was obviously the sort of epicentre of that. And we really, really have always felt that it deserves this kind of fair.”

Gray said the reception on the first day from the local art community, patrons, institutions and collectors who came to attend was “absolutely breathtaking”. He acknowledged that Covid-19 was one of the challenges to bringing a Photofair to New York, as well as finding the right venue in an increasingly packed international art fair calendar.

“We felt that, you know, to be on this dateline, alongside The Armory, but also what’s happening in New York this week in September, was a really important sort of area to be in,” he said.

With Photofairs New York, Angus Montgomery Arts now has 11 art fairs in its portfolio. In the years since launching Photofairs Shanghai in 2014, Gray told ARTnews a big lesson was avoiding the inclination to try and replicate one market into another. “It’s a case of saying, How do I serve that market?,” he said. “It’s not about the cookie cutter approach. What works in Tokyo is not necessarily the thing that works in Shanghai or works in Delhi, or works in New York.”

The location of the Javits Center was a “massive factor” for Gray. “We need to show it in a proper way, you know, as a proper art fair in a proper venue, and to be really out there in in a in a large way, and not be sort of ghettoized in a corner somewhere as, as the medium in itself. To really showcase the artists that are there, that artists are working in this area, or using technologies or different sort of things within their work. To do that properly, I felt it needed to be in the main venue in New York, and that’s the Javits. It was about setting all that up to make sure we could be here at the right time in the right place.”

On the issues surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in digital art and digital manipulation of images, Gray reiterated the fair’s focus on contemporary art and contemporary artists. “Artists use different mediums, different styles, different technologies, and I don’t see a problem with that,” he said. “I think one should be open with what you’re using and be proud of what you’re using and be saying, ‘This is how I’ve done it. And this is how I’ve created it.'”

“From my point of view, ideally, it would have started from the human hand at the beginning. But how one has then created their works, that’s down to the artist. That’s what makes it such an incredible medium. I think when you walk around this fair and you see all the different artworks that are on offer, across all the different sort of styles of work, it really shows the versatility of it. For me, that’s the sort of core component.”

Sustainability has become a growing topic in the art industry, but art fairs have been criticized for the amount of carbon emissions generated from long-haul flights flights, transportation of artworks by air cargo, as well as the paint, furniture, and other materials used for booths. Gray had a more optimistic view. “When those art fairs are more localized, then visitors can travel less and see more,” he said, pointing to the other art fairs happening in New York at the same time as Photofairs and The Armory Show, with several hundred galleries participating across all of them. “What a wonderful opportunity to travel once and see you know, everything that’s available.” he said.

For fair organizers like Gray, sustainability includes consideration of what kinds of vinyls and build materials are used, working with venues and suppliers, as well as figuring out how many materials and items can be reused in the future. “I think there’s a lot of work to be done to ensure that we continue to use sustainable materials, but also what can we keep, store and use for next year as opposed to just replenish, replenish, replenish,” he said.

The galleries Gray mentioned from “amazing places” include PIBI Gallery from Seoul, South Korea, HackleBury Fine Art from London, as well as bitforms and Robert Mann from New York. “Such versatility within all of it, and none of it’s the same.”

Gray emphasized that the artists on display at the fair were a wide range, many of whom combined photography with sculptural works and other mediums. The price points of works on display at Photofairs New York are also meant to be more accessible to buyers, from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One exhibition Gray made special mention of was Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey’s This Earthen Door, on display at Rick Wester Fine Art. The three-year project is a photographic re-working of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, started when the poet was only 14 years old. Marchand and Sobsey’s bright pigment prints of pressed plant specimens were made using an early plant-based photographic process known as an Anthotype. The artists were able to recreate Dickinson’s flower scrapbook, which is now too delicate for private or public viewing.

Gray said This Earthen Door was an “unbelievable beautiful” example of the scope of photography on display at the fair. “It’s absolutely mind blowing,” he said. “When you scratch the surface, and you understand how that was made and how it was produced and the thinking behind it, and the context behind it and the concept, these artists are incredible.”

The inaugural edition of PHOTOFAIRS New York will take place September 8-10, 2023.

The Headlines

TICKET TO RIDE. Twenty-one museums in San Francisco will be free the weekend of December 3 and 4, thanks to an anonymous gift, Datebook reports. Among the institutions participating in the San Francisco Free Museum Weekend, as those days are being billed, are the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (adult ticket: $25) and the Asian Art Museum ($20). Thomas P. Campbell, the CEO and director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ($15), which is also taking part, said in a statement that “museums provide a critical place of discourse, reflection and inspiration. Increasing access to art spaces and removing barriers to experiencing art is crucial.”

ODD LOTS. Some $1 billion of art once owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen will hit the auction block this week at Christie’s—watch this space—but the late collector’s estate has also been selling off his many other holdings, from real estate to boats. On Thursday, the brokerage Fraser Yachts said that it sold his 300-foot superyacht, Tatoosh, according to Penta . The vessel sports two helipads and accommodations for 19 guests, and had been listed for about $90 million (the same as the reported estimate on his 1899 Paul Gauguin painting). No sale price was released. Meanwhile, a 1992 watch by George Daniels sold for about $4.1 million at Phillips in Geneva, Switzerland, after a three-minute bidding war, Bloomberg reports. That result was an auction record for a British wristwatch, and handily trounced its $1 million estimate.

The Digest

As climate protesters from Just Stop Oil and other groups target prized artworks, museums are heightening security measures and hiring consulting firms to teach guards how to identify demonstrators before they start throwing soup or wielding glue. [The Wall Street Journal and Artnet News]

Artist Andres Serrano said that a London theater canceled a screening of his first film, Insurrection, about the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, because it was deemed too “pro-Trump,” a notion he rejects. The theater has not commented. [Artnet News and The Art Newspaper]

Tracey Emin spoke about a quilt she made, titled The Last of the Gold, that provides advice for someone considering an abortion. “I lived it,” the artist said. “And I know what it was like to make that choice.” [The Guardian]

Honor Titus, a creator of tender, leftfield figurative paintings, has a show coming up at Timothy Taylor in London, and got the profile treatment from Kin Woo. “I see my paintings as an oasis and as a place transcendent of ideas of race and stigma,” Titus said. “I want to depict an all-inclusive romance for life.” [Vogue]

Photofairs New York, a new photography fair connected to Photofairs Shanghai, will take place in September in New York alongside the Armory Show at the Javits Center. Organizers expect to sign on 80 to 100 exhibitors. [The Art Newspaper]

The Los Angeles home of home artist Claire Tabouret and musician and carpenter Nathan Thelen features a massive ceiling painting by the former and furniture by the latter. The two have been collaborating for the first time, and will show their creations with Night Gallery at San Francisco’s FOG Design+Art fair in January. [Architectural Digest]

The Kicker

ART PARTY. A collection of writing by the critic Milton Gendel—an American in Rome who died in 2018, just short of his 100th birthday—has been published, and the Atlantic has some choice excerpts. In one of his diaries (which run to an astonishing 10 million words), he recalls a 1967 dinner for sculptor Alexander Calder and his wife, Louisa , in the Italian capital. The artist was “a great, fumbling, white-haired thing in red shirt and red tie,” Gendel wrote, going on to describe a man who “is swift and piercing in his glances and seems to hear everything from all sides of the table.” There is also this, from that evening: “Horseplay with a datepick in the shape of a woman. Calder making a kind of mobile out of a fork and the pick and a date.” Sounds like a pretty nice time.

[The Atlantic]