Picture this.
After ten years at Somerset House,
Photo London begins a new chapter this week. The eleventh edition of the UK’s leading photography fair moves west to the newly reimagined Olympia, placing the fair in Kensington’s cultural orbit, close to the V&A, Design Museum and Serpentine.
The new move gives Photo London more room to play: galleries from New York, Tokyo, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Paris and beyond bring together historic, documentary, fashion, conceptual and contemporary photography, with expanded sections making this edition broader and more ambitious than ever. A show at the top of the bill is Steven Meisel, named Master of Photography for 2026, with a rare public exhibition of portraits from his first professional assignment in London. Shot with Isabella Blow and featuring figures including Stella Tennant, Plum Sykes, Bella Freud, Honor Fraser and Lady Louise Campbell, it captures the anarchic elegance of London fashion.
Positions, curated for a second year by Maria Sukkar with Lady Ina Sarikhani Weston and Lara Veroner, meanwhile, returns to champion up-and-coming photographers without gallery representation. Barbara Ayozie Fu Safira, who was featured as a Spotlight for The Wick in early 2026, is among the names to seek out in a section that gives collector visibility to artists working outside the usual fair machinery.
The expanded
Discovery section, curated by Charlotte Jansen, brings younger galleries and experimental voices further into focus, with strong representation from South Asia. Among The Wick’s ones to watch are Victoria Law Projects, whose stand brings together artists including Edward Rollitt and Carolina Baldomá, and
ANTIDOTE, the Polaroid-only exhibition curated by Cyrus Mahboubian. Featuring artists including Roger Ballen, Maryam Eisler, Charles Johnstone, Alexei Riboud, Sara Sahores and Matt Smith, it makes a strong case for the instant photograph as an antidote to digital excess.
Across the wider fair, there is plenty to reward slower looking.
Source, curated by Tristan Lund, introduces solo presentations by culturally significant artists, including Alfredo Jaar’s
Searching for Africa in LIFE, 1966/2022, presented in collaboration with Prix Pictet and Goodman Gallery. Hope93 brings Misan Harriman’s protest photographs to Olympia, while CLOSE Gallery’s presentation spans renowned artists including Anna Mossman, Denise Webber and Mariano Vivanco. Downstairs, the sweep of works makes clear the breadth of the medium.
Photo London’s Publishing section has grown significantly as well, gathering independent presses and international photography publishers, while a new annual First Book Award honours the late Martin Parr, whose championing of photobooks helped shape how photography is collected and remembered. Along with this is the Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer of the Year Award, the Student Award, Thames & Hudson’s talks programme and a new screening room dedicated to artist film – more than enough reason to make the trip.
