As every year, the month of September signifies the return of the art season all over the globe. We’ve scouted the gallery and museum programs to carefully select the eight photography shows you really shouldn’t miss this fall, ranging from established masters to up-and-coming talents. Enjoy!
I
André Kertész at Foam Amsterdam
Until 10 January

At his core, Kertész was a flâneur, an anonymous observer, strolling through the city streets capturing everything from cafés and parks, to his artist friends, shop windows, shadows cast by trees and passers-by, but always with an unusual composition, from a unique perspective. A great chance to discover the multifaceted work of a highly renowned photographer and a rare opportunity to get to know his rarely exhibited color photographs.
II
Niko Luoma at Atlas Gallery, London
Until 11 November

Luoma achieves a staggering effect with his own unique method, repeatedly exposing a negative to light – sometimes thousands of times – after meticulous preparation that includes drawings and precise calculations. But as always the case with analogue photography, there remains an element of chance and surprise, revealing not only the scientific, but also the unexpected nature of photography. »My work is about the process as much as about the result,« says the artist himself.
III
Alec Soth at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
Until 7 January

IV
Nicholas Nixon at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
From 13 December to 22 April

V
Wim Wenders at the Photographers Gallery, London
From 20 October to 11 February

The exhibition brings together over 200 Polaroids, combining diary-like impressions with aesthetic inspirations from all over Europe and the US, including portraits of cast, crew, friends and family, still lifes, landscapes, and more, both on and off set between the early 1970s and mid 80s - a visual notebook of sorts. “The entire Polaroid process (and procedure) has nothing to do with our contemporary experience when we look at virtual and vanishing apparitions on a screen that we can delete or swipe to the next one. Then, you produced and owned ‘an original’! This was a true thing, a singular object of its own, not a copy, not a print, not multipliable, not repeatable. You couldn’t help feeling that you’d stolen this image-object from the world. You’d transferred a piece of the past to the present,” Wenders nostalgically writes in the accompanying book.
VI
Irving Penn at Grand Palais, Paris
From 21 September

He was especially renowned for his portraits of celebrities and artists from Pablo Picasso and Yves Saint Laurent, to Audrey Hepburn and Alfred Hitchcock, but he also photographed New York’s working class with the same lighting and studio set-up as the city’s more privileged. Penn was equally known for his still lifes and fashion shoots and his images graced the cover of Vogue no less than 160 times. »Centennial« brings together more than 240 images from his long and fruitful career, all prints that Penn developed with his own hands.
VII
Contemporary Chinese Photography and the Cultural Revolution at Museum für Fotografie, Berlin
Until 8 January

This exhibition, thought up by a team of Chinese and German curators, examines its impact on today’s Chinese photography scene. While one part of the show deals with the visual world of the Cultural Revolution at the time, a second part presents the different ways Chinese photo artists reference that period in their work today: some explore the use of photography as a medium for propaganda, some deal with censorship, and others document the surviving legacies of the Cultural Revolution. This intellectual show not only features imagery, but also video installations and photo sculptures offering an interesting insight into a little explored and exhibited subject.
VIII
Olivia Locher at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York
Until 21 October

Nevertheless, they also serve as a rather serious social and political commentary, pointing to the hundreds of decisions big and small made every year by local and state lawmakers. Why can’t wine be served in teacups in Kansas? Why is it illegal to have an ice cream cone in your back pocket in Alabama? Why must pickles pass a bounce test in Connecticut? And why did Texas institute a ban on children having unusual haircuts to uphold the community’s standards of decency? An original and interesting subject matter intelligently executed by a rising talent that you should definitely keep an eye on…