photo basel 2026 Celebrates the Expanding Language of Photography

June 16-21, 2026

Masterworks on Display: From Classical Legends to Contemporary Icons

photo basel 2026 returns as Switzerland’s premier photography art fair, reaffirming its position as the country’s first and only international fair dedicated exclusively to photographic art. Celebrating its 11th edition, the event brings together leading galleries, collectors, artists, curators, and photography enthusiasts from across the globe, creating a vibrant platform for artistic exchange, cultural dialogue, and contemporary visual storytelling.

Taking place from 16–21 June 2026 in Basel, one of the world’s most influential art capitals, photo basel welcomes more than 40 international galleries representing diverse artistic perspectives and photographic practices. The fair continues to strengthen its reputation as an inclusive meeting point for the global art community while making photography accessible to both seasoned collectors and new audiences.

This year’s edition features an impressive presentation of more than 450 artworks created by nearly 170 artists, spanning historical masterpieces, contemporary photography, experimental practices, and emerging talents. Visitors can explore a rich spectrum of photographic expression, from classic black-and-white imagery to innovative mixed-media and interdisciplinary works that challenge conventional definitions of the medium.

Rode Lagune 2023 © Ellen Kooi, Gallery Camera Obscura

Laura au serpent, 2017 © Jean-Baptiste Huynh

Among the notable highlights of photo basel 2026 are works by internationally acclaimed artists and photographers including Vivian Maier, Man Ray, André Kertész, Imogen Cunningham, Marina Abramović, Roger Ballen, Philipp Giegel, Carlos Leal, and Susa Templin. Their presence underscores the fair’s commitment to presenting both iconic figures and influential contemporary voices shaping photography today.

The 2026 edition welcomes a strong roster of returning galleries, including Bildhalle (Zurich), Dorothée Nilsson Gallery (Berlin), IBASHO (Antwerp), Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (Paris), and Galerija Fotografija (Ljubljana). New participants such as Galerie Scena (Tokyo), Atlas Gallery (London), O-Art Project (Lima), and Galerie Bessières Art Contemporain (Paris) further expand the fair’s international reach and cultural diversity.

A major attraction of this year’s programme is “Beyond Photography,” a specially curated section dedicated to artists who redefine the boundaries of photographic practice. Through innovative printing processes, sculptural interventions, installations, and experimental techniques, participating artists demonstrate how photography continues to evolve beyond the traditional two-dimensional image.

Among the featured artists in “Beyond Photography,” Susa Templin presents works that blur the lines between photography, sculpture, and spatial installation. Through layered compositions and architectural interventions, she transforms photographic imagery into immersive sculptural experiences that explore perception, materiality, and space.

Ayo Banton contributes a compelling body of work that combines photography, floral sculpture, scientific research, and experimental printing methods. His practice incorporates solarisation, cyanotypes, and digitally recorded plant signal data, resulting in visually striking artworks that merge nature, technology, and contemporary artistic inquiry.

The artist duo Inka and Niclas further expand the conversation through sculptural works created in direct dialogue with photographic images. By applying photographic emulsions to hand-formed objects, they translate visual narratives into three-dimensional forms, offering new perspectives on image-making and physical presence.

©Ali Uchida , IBASHO

Le Baiser © LiLi Roze, Espace Cyrill Kobler

Another key feature of photo basel 2026 is “Novum,” a dedicated section showcasing works being exhibited publicly for the first time. The presentation includes newly commissioned projects, recent productions, rediscovered works, and previously unseen photographic pieces, giving visitors exclusive access to artistic premieres and fresh discoveries.

The fair also highlights the contributions of women in photography through “annabelle’s choice.” In collaboration with the renowned Swiss magazine annabelle, selected female photographers receive special recognition for outstanding artistic approaches, innovative techniques, and socially relevant subject matter.

Throughout the week, visitors can participate in an extensive programme of free guided tours, curated thematic routes, artist talks, and expert panel discussions. These events provide valuable insights into contemporary photography, collecting practices, artistic processes, and the evolving role of visual culture in society.

As Basel continues its legacy as a global art destination in 2026, photo basel contributes significantly to the city’s dynamic cultural calendar. The fair arrives during a period when photography is increasingly influencing conversations around identity, technology, sustainability, and social transformation, making this year’s edition particularly timely and relevant.

photo basel 2026 is supported by a strong network of partners. Bank Vontobel joins as the Leading Partner, reflecting a shared commitment to fostering artistic excellence and meaningful cultural engagement. Helvetia Insurance, General Agency Basel, continues its valued support of regional arts and culture initiatives, while Jaguar and Land Rover Emil Frey Münchenstein once again provide premium transportation services for guests, collectors, and VIP visitors throughout the event.

With its exceptional gallery lineup, world-class artists, innovative exhibitions, and engaging public programme, photo basel 2026 promises an inspiring celebration of photography in all its forms. The fair continues to serve as a vital platform where artistic innovation, cultural exchange, and photographic excellence converge at the heart of Europe’s international art scene.

Others N.2 © Stefanie Seufert, Galerie Springer Berlin

Lee Friedlander: Life Still

By Lee Friedlander

Publisher : Aperture

2026 | 160 pages

Lee Friedlander: Life Still is a landmark monograph that brings together mostly unpublished photographs from one of America’s most influential photographers.

Spanning nearly seventy years, Friedlander’s career has been defined by a unique vision that finds poetry in the everyday. Life Still offers readers a rare glimpse into his expansive archive while introducing new work that underscores his continued relevance and insight. The book creates a compelling dialogue between past and present, showing how Friedlander’s eye consistently discovers humor, irony, and subtle complexity in the ordinary landscapes, urban spaces, and domestic environments he photographs.

Known for his compositional inventiveness and his ability to transform mundane scenes into layered visual narratives, Friedlander captures America in all its contradictions. Streets, signage, storefronts, fences, trees, and reflections become more than background—they become actors in his ongoing exploration of how we inhabit space and interact with culture. Often witty, occasionally surreal, and always meticulously observed, his photographs invite viewers to reconsider what they notice in the world around them.

Life Still features an insightful essay by Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, which contextualizes Friedlander’s work within both historical and contemporary photographic practice. This combination of visual and written perspective illuminates the ways Friedlander’s images continue to challenge conventions and inspire new generations of photographers.

More than a retrospective, Life Still is both a summation of Friedlander’s decades-long career and a testament to his ongoing creative vitality. It is a celebration of observation, a meditation on American life, and a masterclass in seeing with clarity, humor, and empathy. For anyone interested in the art of photography, this monograph offers an intimate and expansive view into the work of a photographer whose vision remains as compelling and relevant today as ever.

All About Lee Friedlander

Newsha Tavakolian: And They Laughed at Me

By Newsha Tavakolian

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2026 | 220 pages

Newsha Tavakolian: And They Laughed at Me is a bold and disarming return to the fragile beginnings of a photographer who would later gain international recognition. Instead of assembling a volume of celebrated images, Newsha Tavakolian turns to what she once dismissed as her “eyesores”—photographs made in her teenage years when she began working as a photojournalist in Tehran. Taken at sixteen, in the charged atmosphere of a country shaped by political tension and social constraint, these early frames carry the urgency and uncertainty of youth.

Revisiting these photographs decades later, Tavakolian confronts not only her technical inexperience but also the emotional terrain of growing up under scrutiny. The images reveal crowded streets, intimate domestic moments, and fleeting expressions that hover between defiance and vulnerability. What once felt flawed now reads as raw testimony. Through this act of excavation, she reframes imperfection as evidence of persistence, tracing the arc from youthful aspiration to the sobering awareness of reality’s weight.

The book unfolds as a rite of passage. Tavakolian reflects on the tension between hope and disillusionment, between the instinct to withdraw into darkness and the determination to move toward light. Her career, later marked by international exhibitions and major honors, including the Carmignac Photojournalism Award and the Prince Claus Award, began in these formative encounters with the camera. The photographs capture the seeds of a voice that would grow increasingly nuanced, attentive to identity, censorship, and the quiet resilience of everyday life in Iran.

And They Laughed at Me becomes more than an archival project; it is a meditation on self-doubt and endurance. By embracing images she once rejected, Tavakolian asserts the value of vulnerability in artistic growth. The result is an honest and reflective volume that invites readers to reconsider failure, to see in missteps the contours of becoming, and to recognize that the path toward clarity often begins in uncertainty.

All About Newsha Tavakolian

Marching West: The Los Angeles Civil Rights Movement in Photographs

By Karin L. Stanford with Mark Speltz

Publisher : Getty Publications

2026 | 192 pages

This volume offers a compelling visual record of the people, organizations, and coalitions that shaped the civil rights movement in Los Angeles, presenting a first-of-its-kind photographic history of activism on the American West Coast.

In 1963, during a landmark speech at Wrigley Field before nearly forty thousand people, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged Angelenos to confront inequality at home, stating that meaningful change required action within their own city: “The most important thing that you can do is to set Los Angeles free, because you have segregation and discrimination here, and police brutality.”

Marching West traces this urgent call through the lens of photography, revealing how images not only documented the struggle for Black equality but also actively participated in shaping its visibility and momentum. The book brings together more than one hundred photographs, including previously unpublished works, that connect local activism in Los Angeles to broader national movements.

Spanning churches, street demonstrations, cultural gatherings, and political organizing, these images highlight the role of a diverse network of participants—community leaders, religious figures, Hollywood personalities, and everyday citizens—who collectively advanced the fight for civil rights in the American West.

Drawn from significant archives such as the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge, the Getty Research Institute, and other Southern California collections, the volume features work by photographers including Harry Adams, Howard Bingham, Charles Brittin, Joe Flowers, Vera Jackson, and Charles Williams.

Together, these photographs offer more than documentation. They form a layered narrative of resistance and solidarity, expanding the historical understanding of the civil rights era by foregrounding voices and events often overlooked in mainstream accounts of American social progress.

Albert Watson: Kaos

By Albert Watson

Publisher : Taschen

2026 | 408 pages

Albert Watson: Kaos is a masterful survey of one of photography’s most influential voices, spanning five decades of work that oscillates between intimacy and spectacle. Watson’s photographs are at once meticulously composed and viscerally immediate, capturing both the iconic and the unexpected with equal authority.

KAOS charts Watson’s journey from his breakthrough Alfred Hitchcock portrait in 1973 to the present, revealing the astonishing range of his vision. Across its pages, readers encounter a kaleidoscope of subjects: celebrities in revealing vulnerability, strangers in fleeting urban moments, wildlife in arresting stillness, and landscapes that shimmer with elemental power. Each frame is a study in light, shadow, and narrative tension, embodying Watson’s extraordinary ability to render the familiar as extraordinary.

The book moves fluidly between worlds. Supermodels and pop icons—David Bowie, Kate Moss, Jay Z, Jennifer Lopez, Mick Jagger—sit alongside anonymous figures in neon-lit cities and remote Scottish landscapes, their presence amplified by Watson’s uncanny sense of timing and composition. From sensuous nudes to stark urban street photography, his work explores surface beauty while hinting at the emotional and psychological depth beneath. Watson’s camera captures not only what is seen, but the subtle textures of human experience: desire, humor, solitude, and magnetism.

Accompanied by an essay from Philippe Garner and enriched with Watson’s own reflections, as well as previously unpublished Polaroids from his personal archive, KAOS is both an authoritative career retrospective and a deeply personal document. The photographs pulse with cinematic allure, formal precision, and the irrepressible vitality of a life spent observing the world in its most dynamic and intimate moments.

Presented in a sumptuous hardcover, with optional signed Art Editions including exclusive prints, Albert Watson: Kaos is a definitive celebration of an artist whose work continues to inspire photographers, collectors, and enthusiasts around the globe, capturing a universe simultaneously chaotic, poetic, and utterly compelling.

photo basel 2026 Celebrates the Expanding Language of Photography

June 16-21, 2026

Masterworks on Display: From Classical Legends to Contemporary Icons

All About Photo Basel

Selected Books