French organisers pull the plug on offshoot fair, held in a Hollywood studio backlot, two months before opening
Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015 at the New York Backlot at Paramount Pictures Studios. Photo: © Too many Pictures
Reed Exhibitions, the company that has organised three edition of Paris Photo Los Angeles, announced on 15 February that it has cancelled this year’s fair, due to open 29 April and run through 1 May, citing a lack of sales. The young California fair, held in the Paramount film studios lot, is an offshoot of the longer-running French event. But as we had reported last year, it had started to lose some of its international flavour, a bad sign for its
sustainability.
“Despite the abundance of collectors in Los Angeles and California that figure among the
buyers regularly in attendance at international fairs, the level of sales during Paris
Photo Los Angeles is not sufficient to support such a fair and to offer our exhibitors the
best conditions of return on their investment,” said Jean-Daniel Compain, the senior vice
president of culture, luxury and leisure at Reed Exhibitions France, in a release. He added
that the organisers "continue nonetheless to explore other paths for the international
development and expansion of our fair". A proposed Los Angeles satellite of its modern and
contemporary art fair Fiac that was meant to open this year was also cancelled.
Paris Photo Los Angeles was the brainchild of the fair’s former director, Julien Frydman,
who left at the end of 2014. In its statement on the cancellation, Reed said the 20th
French edition of the fair will be unaffected and is still planned for November 2016.
