Haute Photographie 2024

An opportunity for emerging photographers to showcase their work alongside the more seasoned professionals in the field – this was the main premise of this year’s Haute Photographie, the five-day photography fair that took place in Amsterdam Noord between the 18th and the 22nd of September. Samples of over 50 national and international photographers were joined in a carefully curated representation of the past, present and future of photography harmoniously coexisting in the same space.

The amount of variegated and unique human experiences translated into art that I found at Haute was almost overwhelming. Walking through the accurately separated areas of the fair felt like jumping from one person’s living room to someone else’s – one moment you exist in a specific reality, and the next you stumble into a completely different one. Each aspect, from the setup and the frames to the measures of the artworks oozed maniacal care and thought, giving all artists alike (whether emerging or affirmed) equal dignity and space to display their works.

Julia Wimmerlin has been in the industry for more than ten years. While at first she focused more on commercial and travel, since the pandemic she has been delving into art photography. During our conversation, she reflects on her journey, explaining how the search for a style is often elusive.

We ask her about her favorite piece in her exposition, but Julia retorts by requesting our opinion instead. She insists on the idea of personal perspective, where the artist is only a messenger in the relationship between art and spectator. “It is the beauty of something that is not specific [...]; you can imagine things [...] to create a portal where you can create your own world.” Needless to say, this sentiment is perfectly echoed in her collection which leaves ample room for interpretation – Julia plays with angles, layers and blur in several works of hers, taking it almost to dizziness, yet seems to avoid a specific focus on her subjects. In her view, the role of the artist is to present a portal for the viewer’s imagination, to create a space for interpretation where the outcome is never fixed or predictable. Her curiosity lies in the emotional responses her work evoked, as her counter question from our conversation proved earlier.

In Julia’s defense, this interactive dialogue between the artist and the audience is a clearly recurring theme throughout the 2024 edition of Haute. There is definitely a sense of fluidity between the artists’ intentions and the audience's experience, allowing each interpretation to feel deeply personal.

Jip Huisintveld found herself participating in the fair through social media. “I saw the open call online on Instagram” " she explains, after agreeing to give us a couple of minutes of her time. “I’ve heard about them before [...] in our library (AN: at art school) we already had these kinds of books, and I’ve always used them as reference for my projects”. 

Jip mainly focuses on street and documentary photography. She studied in London, which happens to be the same location where the four pictures selected for the book were taken, and she particularly values authenticity in her work. “I really focus on the way people act on the street and with their environments. [...] It’s very important that I don’t interfere with my subject”. 

Jip’s frame of mind is indeed capably reflected in the pieces she shows us. Not only does she capture instants, but also people busy with trivial aspects of their daily life - she finds a subject in a window shop, a pair of hands presumably holding supermarket-fresh breakfast, and so on. It’s not the mundanity that catches my eye, since it is quite common in the genre, but rather the choice that led to the photographs being taken in the first place. What Jip found interesting and worthy of being immortalized might not have caught the eye of someone else, which is why I find her pieces so unique. 

Once again, I am granted the privilege of peeking through the keyhole and getting a glimpse of the artist’s vision - the interpretation of what is shown is up to me, as I have been reminded by multiple artists throughout the exhibition, yet I reckon being given something so worth interpreting is one of the true highlights of art. It’s not only a matter of balance between what is personal for me and what is for the author – we simply coexist, along with a piece that never changes or always does, depending on who you ask. 

Haute Photographie 2024  succeeds in its mission not just as a photography exhibition, but as a testament to the evolving nature of the art itself – how it can encapsulate the deeply personal while inviting endless interpretation, with the contribution of both emerging and more seasoned artists in the international landscape.