Hop on the Eurostar this week for a visit to the world’s largest commercial art fair for photography, Paris Photo, which returns to the Grand Palais following the restoration of the iconic Parisian landmark. Running from today to Sunday, Paris Photo offers visitors the chance to view and buy the very best of the medium from its earliest era in the 19th century up to today, presented through more than 200 galleries, as well as publishers. As the fair’s director, Florence Bourgeois, told The Wick “Today, photography is more multifaceted than ever and at the core of contemporary art, and this is the vision I am committed to developing with my teams.”

Among the highlights is the Paris Photo’s Elles x Paris Photo pathway through the fair highlighting the work of women photographers – curated this year by Raphaëlle Stopin, director of the Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie. In addition for the first time this year, with the support of Kering, four galleries present group and solo exhibitions by women photographers.

Stopin says her selection was informed by both “the linked silences of history” and “the plurality of paths taken by women artists, who have used photography to challenge norms and explore their creation beyond the stereotypes of the intimate.”

Across France and beyond, cultural institutions are honouring the 100th anniversary of Surrealism, and to mark the event at Paris Photo, the fair has invited filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Jim Jarmusch to curate a personal selection of artworks on show – a brooding, mostly black and white mix ranging from August Sander to Daido Moriyama to Peter Hujar. The artist will also participate in a conversation open to the public on Friday 8th November, followed by a book signing.

Equally spectacular and surreal is this dazzling Chila Kumari Singh Burman exhibition, unveiled at Compton Verney today. As the darkness creeps in ever earlier, Burman’s brilliant exhibition brings illumination to the countryside, lighting up the historic facades of Compton Verney with the artist’s trademark neon works that she has made since lighting up the Tate Britain with her widely acclaimed installation in 2020.

Beyond the kaleidoscopic intervention that takes over the front of the house, the exhibition continues inside with array of works from new and recent sculptures, many of which have not been shown before, to earlier prints, collages and films. It’s Burman’s largest exhibition in recent years, and encompasses a 40-year period in which the artist has explored her Hindu-Punjabi cultural identity, feminism, and working class Liverpudlian upbringing, amongst other themes.