Unseen Photo Fair and Festival, Amsterdam, Opens 18 September 2015

Unseen Photo Fair and Festival, Amsterdam’s international photography fair and festival, returns this autumn. The heart of the festival, located at Unseen Photo Fair, will once again be taking over the Westergasfabriek from 18-20 September. The festival, which runs 18-27 September throughout the city of Amsterdam, brings together the institutions, galleries, academies, project spaces and artists working with the medium of photography with the aim of giving unseen work an audience and highlighting the creative character of Amsterdam, with venues spread across the city in an unprecedented move.

This will be the fourth annual Unseen Photo Fair and Festival. Over the last three years, the fair alone has welcomed around 72,000 visitors and introduced them to a plethora of emerging photographers as well as previously undiscovered work by established artists. This has included the work of more than 500 international artists. As they have previously, Unseen Photo Fair will play host to galleries from across the globe. Flowers Gallery (London), Martin van Zomeren (Amsterdam), Robert Morat Galerie (Hamburg) and G/P Gallery (Tokyo) will all be returning to participate in the fair, alongside a vast number of new galleries.

The Unseen Premieres will also be returning for 2015. These truly capture the spirit of Unseen as they are works which have never been exhibited before, and therefore are unseen by a wider audience. The aim of the Unseen Premieres is to present a commentary on the state of photography as a medium, as well as offering something new and fresh to the photography scene. The winner of last year’s Outset Unseen Exhibition Fund, Regine Petersen, will be showing one of these Premieres, which is sure to be a highlight. Other Premieres will include the works of Swedish duo Inka & Niclas, Dutch photographer Anouk Kruithof, and the French photographer Noémie Goudal.

The campaign images for Unseen are by up-and-coming Hungarian artist Peter Puklus. Puklus’s campaign centres on a series of interpretations of a sculptural self-portrait. This self-portrait is a reimagining of the long lost photograph of Head (1913), a sculpture by the Hungarian avant-garde artist Joseph Csaky. Puklus explains that his campaign “runs parallel to the ‘unseen’ idea. Made from the very temporary material of plaster, it disappeared after a year. It no longer exists; all that remains is one photograph. Nobody knows what the side or the back of this sculpture looked like. Bringing alive new perspectives of it has become part of my process.” Each image from the series is slightly different, as Puklus photographed his sculpture in a range of locations and then distorted the colours of the resulting images. Limited edition prints of many of these photographs will be for sale at Unseen Photo Fair 2015.

Unseen Photo Fair and Festival 2015 will be extending further into the city than in previous years. This will include new commissioned projects in remarkable locations, shows in the city’s neighbourhoods put on by young photographers, collaborative events with well known institutions, and special access to private collections. With so much on offer, Unseen Photo Fair and Festival promises to be bigger and better than ever.

Unseen Photo Fair, 18-20 September, Westergasfabriek Amsterdam.
Unseen Festival, 18-27 September, locations across Amsterdam.

Discover more at www.unseenamsterdam.com.

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Credits
1. Inka & Nicla, Yet Untitled, 2015 © Inka & Nicla. Courtesy of the artists and Grundemark Nilsson Gallery.