Our top ten highlights from Photo London as it enters a new era
As Photo London relocates into the vast spaces of Kensington Olympia, we visited to bring you our top ten highlights from the annual festival featuring two centuries of photography.
After it was refounded in 2015, Photo London, the capital’s annual commercial festival of photography, has been held in the labyrinthine spaces of Somerset House. It has proved to be an extremely popular component of the historic palace, but often felt trapped within the confining rooms, basement corridors, and uncomfortable tents.
It has now moved to Kensington Olympia, filling one of the grand glass-roofed exhibition halls within a vast complex currently being redeveloped by designer Thomas Heatherwick in a very unsubtle, heavy-handed version of his ‘Humanised’ architectural language (see 00151).
While the new location may be less easy to get to and less glamorous, it is a vastly more superior venue for such an event, and allows far greater space and light for participating galleries to share their works. It also allows more conversations between presentations, greater visibility for the breadth of photography on offer, and a far more enjoyable visitor experience.
And within the rich presentations, there is much for those of you with interests in architecture, landscape, and the built environment, through the history of the medium into cutting edge contemporary practitioners.
Here, we present our top ten recessed.space highlights from the new era of Photo London.
It has now moved to Kensington Olympia, filling one of the grand glass-roofed exhibition halls within a vast complex currently being redeveloped by designer Thomas Heatherwick in a very unsubtle, heavy-handed version of his ‘Humanised’ architectural language (see 00151).
While the new location may be less easy to get to and less glamorous, it is a vastly more superior venue for such an event, and allows far greater space and light for participating galleries to share their works. It also allows more conversations between presentations, greater visibility for the breadth of photography on offer, and a far more enjoyable visitor experience.
And within the rich presentations, there is much for those of you with interests in architecture, landscape, and the built environment, through the history of the medium into cutting edge contemporary practitioners.
Here, we present our top ten recessed.space highlights from the new era of Photo London.
Stéphane
Couturier
Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich
With a solo presentation, Stéphane Couturier pairs images from two series of works looking at iconic architecture of Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier. The images do not present the two buildings as a documentary of place, but rather as layered, fractured, and flattened forms.
Gray’s Villa E-1027 was originally white-walled, but Le Corbusier visited and painted, without permissions, eight large murals throughout the architecture - manspreading his aesthetic over her design. Alongside the villa, new works of the Corbusier Pavilion in Zurich, the last building he designed, was created to house his artworks.
Here, photography punctures this compression of two places that contain Le Corbusier’s artworks - with and without permission - and, instead of uncritically representing the buildings, questions surface, depth, authorshop, and truth.
Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich
With a solo presentation, Stéphane Couturier pairs images from two series of works looking at iconic architecture of Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier. The images do not present the two buildings as a documentary of place, but rather as layered, fractured, and flattened forms.
Gray’s Villa E-1027 was originally white-walled, but Le Corbusier visited and painted, without permissions, eight large murals throughout the architecture - manspreading his aesthetic over her design. Alongside the villa, new works of the Corbusier Pavilion in Zurich, the last building he designed, was created to house his artworks.
Here, photography punctures this compression of two places that contain Le Corbusier’s artworks - with and without permission - and, instead of uncritically representing the buildings, questions surface, depth, authorshop, and truth.
Artwork Image: “E1027+123 – Villa Eileen Gray – Photo #3” (2021-2022) © Stéphane
Couturier, courtesy Christophe Guye Galerie
Gallery: www.christopheguye.com
Artist: www.stephanecouturier.fr
Artwork Image: “The Medium Is the Message” (1975) © Branko Lenart, courtesy Photon Gallery
Branko Lenart
Photon Gallery, Ljubljana
Part of a mixed display of four Central and Eastern European photographers are works by Branko Lenart, a Slovenian artist with a long practice questioning the nature of images. Images shown here come from Lenart’s long-running Hand:Work series (1975-2012), placing the photographer’s body into landscapes as a kind of reverse-selfie.
At once documenting place, and the act of recording place, each image also contains an uncanny interactions with the setting, dropping in text, imagery, props, and play. Coincidentally. Lenart has a concurrent exhibition on at Photon Gallery in Ljubljana.
Photon Gallery, Ljubljana
Part of a mixed display of four Central and Eastern European photographers are works by Branko Lenart, a Slovenian artist with a long practice questioning the nature of images. Images shown here come from Lenart’s long-running Hand:Work series (1975-2012), placing the photographer’s body into landscapes as a kind of reverse-selfie.
At once documenting place, and the act of recording place, each image also contains an uncanny interactions with the setting, dropping in text, imagery, props, and play. Coincidentally. Lenart has a concurrent exhibition on at Photon Gallery in Ljubljana.
Various artists
Robert Hershkowitz, London
Celebrating the depth of the medium’s history at Photo London is this rich presentation from Robert Hershkowitz, a gallery that has been in operation for nearly a quarter of photography’s two century history.
Major practitioners including William Henry Fox Talbot, Gustave Le Gray, and Roger Fenton are included in a display that features wonderful historic architecture, and as is so often the case everyday architectural moments long forgotten - a ramshackle cottage, early street lighting, and famous historical sites in contexts now long-cleansed and cleared.
Robert Hershkowitz, London
Celebrating the depth of the medium’s history at Photo London is this rich presentation from Robert Hershkowitz, a gallery that has been in operation for nearly a quarter of photography’s two century history.
Major practitioners including William Henry Fox Talbot, Gustave Le Gray, and Roger Fenton are included in a display that features wonderful historic architecture, and as is so often the case everyday architectural moments long forgotten - a ramshackle cottage, early street lighting, and famous historical sites in contexts now long-cleansed and cleared.
Artwork Image: “Farmyard Scene” (circa 1853) by
Alphonse Davanne
© & courtesy Robert Hershkowitz Ltd
Gallery: www. hershkowitzgallery.com
Edward
Burtynsky
Flowers Gallery, London
No international art fair would be fully-functioning without an Edward Burtynsky photograph or more. Large-format images cataloguing in rich detail the devestation that man has wrought upon nature, they may often be critiqued for turning destruction into beautiful aesthetic, they are nonetheless sublime.
Curated with a rich blood-red running through the selection, all the images are from a recent project documenting Western Australia, capturing extraction and its fallout. An image of the Kwinana Alumina Refinery reads as an inverted explosion of darkness, industrial residue and industrial mud weathered and turned into an abstract, painterly study.
Flowers Gallery, London
No international art fair would be fully-functioning without an Edward Burtynsky photograph or more. Large-format images cataloguing in rich detail the devestation that man has wrought upon nature, they may often be critiqued for turning destruction into beautiful aesthetic, they are nonetheless sublime.
Curated with a rich blood-red running through the selection, all the images are from a recent project documenting Western Australia, capturing extraction and its fallout. An image of the Kwinana Alumina Refinery reads as an inverted explosion of darkness, industrial residue and industrial mud weathered and turned into an abstract, painterly study.
Zofia Rydet
Raster, Warszawa
Thirty photographs from the archive of Zofia Rydet fill the Raster booth, a stunning glimpse into personal domestic Polish environments. All taken from Rydet’s unfinished project, A Sociological Record, the images are selected from thousands upon thousands of black and white negatives taken across the artist’s 86 year life, that ended in 1997.
Capturing the few (but important) belongings and traditional clothing, the images also act as remarkable documents rural wooden architecture from across Poland. Traversing decades of changing Polish political history, the flat, deadpan documenting cuts through national propaganda and imagery of the post-war period.
Raster, Warszawa
Thirty photographs from the archive of Zofia Rydet fill the Raster booth, a stunning glimpse into personal domestic Polish environments. All taken from Rydet’s unfinished project, A Sociological Record, the images are selected from thousands upon thousands of black and white negatives taken across the artist’s 86 year life, that ended in 1997.
Capturing the few (but important) belongings and traditional clothing, the images also act as remarkable documents rural wooden architecture from across Poland. Traversing decades of changing Polish political history, the flat, deadpan documenting cuts through national propaganda and imagery of the post-war period.
Artwork Image: “From the Sociological Record. Podhale (Chochołów)” (1980) ©
Zofia Rydet, courtesy Raster
Gallery: www.en.rastergallery.com
Hicham Gardaf
The Positions section of Photo London is a new addition to the annual event, offering a large platform dedicated to artists without gallery representation. Amongst the ten emerging practitioners showing is Hicham Gardaf, London-based and born in Tangier, who documents suburban architectural surfaces across the city of his birth.
An artist with rich interests in otherwise mundane or monochrome urban landscapes, these images from the 2014-16 The Red Square series explore absences of space, undesigned, unplanned, and unceremonial, but here given a presence and worth.
The Positions section of Photo London is a new addition to the annual event, offering a large platform dedicated to artists without gallery representation. Amongst the ten emerging practitioners showing is Hicham Gardaf, London-based and born in Tangier, who documents suburban architectural surfaces across the city of his birth.
An artist with rich interests in otherwise mundane or monochrome urban landscapes, these images from the 2014-16 The Red Square series explore absences of space, undesigned, unplanned, and unceremonial, but here given a presence and worth.
Júlia Standovár
TOBE Gallery, Budapest
There is something weird, kinky, and anxious going on in the woods with Júlia Standovár’s Chain Forest series. Shot on 35mm and medium-format, the timelessness of the forest is somehow being held back by chains and ironmongery, trapping it, stalling slow growth.
They appear as some kind of leftover trace of human occupation, whether that be from some nocturnal sins of the flesh or as ancient remains of a long-passed human civilisation discovered amongst trees that have continued growing regardless. Alongside are three untitled sculptures, again utilising chains along with concrete and analogue photographs of street and garden furniture, weird talismans from an uncertain place.
TOBE Gallery, Budapest
There is something weird, kinky, and anxious going on in the woods with Júlia Standovár’s Chain Forest series. Shot on 35mm and medium-format, the timelessness of the forest is somehow being held back by chains and ironmongery, trapping it, stalling slow growth.
They appear as some kind of leftover trace of human occupation, whether that be from some nocturnal sins of the flesh or as ancient remains of a long-passed human civilisation discovered amongst trees that have continued growing regardless. Alongside are three untitled sculptures, again utilising chains along with concrete and analogue photographs of street and garden furniture, weird talismans from an uncertain place.
Artwork Image: “I Am Letting Time Do Its Thing” (2024) ©
Júlia Standovár, courtesy TOBE Gallery
Gallery: www.tobegallery.hu
Artist: www.juliastandovar.com
Rajesh Vora
PHOTOINK, New Delhi
Mumbai-based photographer Rajesh Vora has a three-decade interest in landscape, habitation, and monument. The series shown here, and widely previously presented in exhibition and publication, catalogues the Everyday Baroque of sculptural rooftops across the Punjab region, a domestic-decoration vernacular that began over the 1970s.
Villages are gloriously crowned by icons including weight lifters, aeroplanes, footballers, and animals, designed to present the passions and identities of each home’s owner. One part pop-art, one part monument, there is a joyful humanity in the roofscapes recorded.
PHOTOINK, New Delhi
Mumbai-based photographer Rajesh Vora has a three-decade interest in landscape, habitation, and monument. The series shown here, and widely previously presented in exhibition and publication, catalogues the Everyday Baroque of sculptural rooftops across the Punjab region, a domestic-decoration vernacular that began over the 1970s.
Villages are gloriously crowned by icons including weight lifters, aeroplanes, footballers, and animals, designed to present the passions and identities of each home’s owner. One part pop-art, one part monument, there is a joyful humanity in the roofscapes recorded.
Hélène Binet
LARGE GLASS, London
Architectural photographer Hélène Binet has been receiving increasing attention over recent years, with a recent Royal Academy exhibition, the 2025 Lucie honoree for achievement in architecture, and a recent publication on Jewish houses, which we covered (see 00263).
A rich curation of Binet’s images, capturing architecture including by Palladio and Wren in her singular poetic aesthetic, is centred with a selection of books by the artist. Binet’s film images - including some Polaroids - offers a moment of calm within a busy Photo London, withdrawing the viewer into an historic otherness, and material presence.
LARGE GLASS, London
Architectural photographer Hélène Binet has been receiving increasing attention over recent years, with a recent Royal Academy exhibition, the 2025 Lucie honoree for achievement in architecture, and a recent publication on Jewish houses, which we covered (see 00263).
A rich curation of Binet’s images, capturing architecture including by Palladio and Wren in her singular poetic aesthetic, is centred with a selection of books by the artist. Binet’s film images - including some Polaroids - offers a moment of calm within a busy Photo London, withdrawing the viewer into an historic otherness, and material presence.
Artwork Image: “Villa Saraceno, Andrea Palladio (B)” (2023) © Hélène Binet, courtesy LARGE GLASS
Gallery: www.largeglass.co.uk
Artist: www.helenebinet.com
Niccolò
Montesi
Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris
Italian artist Niccolò Montesi‘s images have something of the Giorgio de Chirico about them, a deadpan stillness that somehow still contains something about to happen or shift to disrupt the calm. Images here are from Montesi’s Pantelleria Paese series, documenting the Sicilian island in crisp light.
Montesi studied architecture in London, at UEL and then the AA, before studying photography in Italy and New York, and his images here speak to both disciplines - almost a flattening of architectural form into two-dimensional drawing and diagram.
Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris
Italian artist Niccolò Montesi‘s images have something of the Giorgio de Chirico about them, a deadpan stillness that somehow still contains something about to happen or shift to disrupt the calm. Images here are from Montesi’s Pantelleria Paese series, documenting the Sicilian island in crisp light.
Montesi studied architecture in London, at UEL and then the AA, before studying photography in Italy and New York, and his images here speak to both disciplines - almost a flattening of architectural form into two-dimensional drawing and diagram.
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Photo London is the UK’s leading international fair for photography and image-based art. Each year it brings together the world’s most acclaimed photographers, galleries and curators alongside a new generation of emerging talent.
www.photolondon.org
visit
Photo London 2026 takes place at Kensington Olympia, running through to Sunday 17 May.
Further details available at: www.photolondon.org
images
All location photographs © Will Jennings.
publication date
15 May 2026
tags
Further details available at: www.photolondon.org
