For its 10th edition Photo London aims to look beyond the notorious ‘Kate Moss Index’

“As far as I’m aware, this edition will have no pictures of Kate Moss,” says Sophie Parker, the recently appointed director of Photo London. The UK’s leading photography fair celebrates a decade this year, running from 15 to 18 May at its long-standing venue, Somerset House.

Over the ten years, Photo London has seen many changes in its direction. It was originally led by its founders and co-owners Michael Benson and Fariba Farshad. In 2019, they poached Roderick van der Lee, the director of the rival upstart Amsterdam photography fair Unseen, to run the show. Van der Lee was in the post for just a year before returning to his former role. Then, in 2023, they appointed Kamiar Maleki, the former director of the Volta fairs in New York and Basel; he lasted a single edition.

As it cycled through directors, the fair often seemed stuck in a loop, with most editions scoring high on the “Kate Moss Index”—industry slang for how many pictures of the supermodel participating galleries are showing. Photo London has sometimes been accused of catering to a class of collector focused only on traditional photographic subjects—stately lions, murmurations of birds, the smooth flesh of pouting women—rather than new or strange interpretations of the medium. Stand duplication was an issue. “We all know about the Kate Moss Index,” Parker says. “We are trying to reward galleries that take risks.”

Unlike her predecessors, Parker has not run a fair before. She joined Photo London in 2018 as its gallery development manager, progressing to associate director before being appointed as the fair’s first female director last year. “It has been a great pleasure to watch Sophie rise through the ranks over the years,” Farshad tells The Art Newspaper. “The timing was right for both Sophie and the fair to take the next step and we are delighted that one of our own is leading us so brilliantly into this landmark tenth edition.”

Parker, by her own admission, is not a typical hire for such a role. Her academic background includes a Master’s from London’s Goldsmiths and a BA from Manchester Metropolitan University. Before Photo London, she spent three years at Cristea Roberts Gallery, moving up the chain from gallery assistant. She grew up in Macclesfield, a small market town in northern England. She attended the local comprehensive school and failed her A-levels “quite spectacularly” before a foundation art course, access to a darkroom and “a really inspiring teacher” piqued an interest in photography. It allowed her to gain a place at Manchester, funded via a bursary.

“I used to joke that, in the art world, hiring a northerner is a diversity hire,” Parker says. “When I came to London, I don’t think I had any idea how elitist it can be. But I did feel some hostility. I often just didn’t have the same reference points or life experiences to talk about. I think some people dismissed me because I didn’t have the right connections or wear the right clothes. I had to deal with a lot of self doubt.” Yet her background provided her with plenty of strengths. “I learned to pivot,” she says. “I wasn’t focused on one dream. I became good at figuring stuff out—and I am resourceful.”

“Sophie has overcome the obvious challenges of being from a working-class background and being a young woman,” says Charlotte Jansen, a photography critic, a contributor to this publication and the curator of the Photo London’s Discovery section. “She’s become very successful in a commercial art world which is still not diverse or inclusive.”

Learning on the job

If Parker has had to learn by doing—without the luxury, even, of an unpaid internship—then she has used her time wisely; she knows as much as anyone about the particulars and practitioners of contemporary photography, especially beyond the mainstream. “I have always been interested in female photography, queer photography, marginalised photography,” she says. “I am for anything that strays away from straight white men.”

She has also built strong relationships with senior figures across the sector, many of whom, via the fair’s newly created curatorial committee, are contributing their skills to this edition. “I absolutely think that [being a woman] feeds into how I approach the role,” she says. “I get to work with incredible people who I respect. Do I need to project authority over them? I don’t feel that.”

Parker has also done away with Photo London’s tradition of anointing a Master of Photography (thus far often a straight white man) to instead give curators more latitude. A centrepiece of this will be a group exhibition at the fair called London Lives, organised by the former Financial Times critic Francis Hodgson, which will include works by more than 30 artists. “It’s a bit of a mess,” Hodgson says of the show. “Just like London.” Contributors include David Bailey, James Barnor, Nadav Kander and Hannah Starkey, who is displaying portraits she took at a 2017 Women’s March in London. Also included will be new commissions from more emerging names like Heather Agyepong, Jermaine Francis and Hannah Hughes. A highlight will be the work of Nick Turpin, a press photographer who, in 2016, set up a tripod on the old Elephant & Castle shopping centre to photograph Londoners in silent repose on the upper deck of passing night buses.

A strength of Photo London has always been the Discovery section, which platforms brand new voices and gallerists. Here, work on show is genuinely affordable: photographs are sold for sometimes less than £100. Among the artists selected by Jansen are Bee Gats, an American photographer brought up in institutional care after his mother died when he was just six. Through the New Orleans gallery Mortal Machine, Gatz is showing his series In the 305—raw, confronting portraits of Miami’s street life, never shown in Europe before.

Recognising the strength of Discovery, Parker has added a partner section, titled Positions, curated by Maria Sukkar and featuring unrepresented photographers championed by the fair’s “supporters’ circle” and reviewed by the curatorial committee. It is a gesture that suggests a dilution of the elitism and clique mentality that has beset contemporary photography for many years. It marks a fitting new pathway for the fair as it begins another decade—perhaps now with the Kate Moss Index left in the past.