Kahmann Gallery has been a champion of Dutch photography from the past and present since the start of the gallery in 2005. For Paris Photo 2019, Kahmann Gallery is putting the spotlight on Dutch artists who are unencumbered by the so-called rules of photography. The perfect printing technique or correct processes are of no interest to them. A highly intuitive style of photography, not heavily bogged down by concepts or technique. It is these artists who were and are on the forefront of taking the medium to new heights. Kahmann Gallery will show unique vintage prints by Gerard Fieret (1925-2009) and Sanne Sannes (1930 - 1967). In addition the gallery presents two notorious rebels from the 1960s and 70s with two up and coming names who are exploring the photographic medium in their own unique manner: Bastiaan Woudt (1987) and Paul Cupido (1972).

The photographic work of Paul Cupido revolves around the principle of mu: a philosophical concept that could be translated as ‘does not have’, but is equally open to countless interpretations. Mu can be considered a void, albeit one that holds potential. Cupido’s ongoing project Searching for Mu, which includes an artist’s book, photography and film, deals with the consoling beauty of the evanescent, the letting go of ego, and the reconnecting to deeper levels of consciousness. In the summer of 2018 Cupido worked on the project in residency in the Brazilian Amazon, this time related to the ephemeral and symbolic correspondences between the body and the earth. Cupido graduated cum laude from the Photo Academy in Amsterdam in 2017 with the first stage of Searching for Mu. He won the Benrido Hariban Juror’s Choice Award in 2017 and was featured in New Dutch Photography Talent 2018 and GUP Magazine issue 57 (2018).

Born in The Hague, photographer Gerard Fieret is a Dutch national treasure. His eccentric style - he stamped his prints repeatedly with his name and P.O box number, and signed them obtrusively - is the mark of a rule-breaking sensibility that came into its artistic prime in the 1960s and helped pull photography into the edgiest of post-modern realms. Fieret’s camera looks unforgiving, and his subjects look back, with reserves of dignity, intelligence and a delicately balanced trust in the artist’s vision. It is a truly liberated vision of a photographer that knew, before a good many fellow fine-art photographers, that photography was meant to be stretched, scratched, pushed to its limits and graphically redefined. Signed, stamped and rife with Fieret’s gesture, fetish and feeling, these photos presented their subjectivity upon us and upon their subjects, transforming the objective moment into a life experience.

Bastiaan Woudt has seen a meteoric rise within the world of contemporary photography. After starting his own photography practice from scratch just a few years ago, with no experience or formal training, he has developed into a photographer with his own distinct signature style – abstract yet sharp, with a strong focus on detail. As a student of the history of photography through devouring photobooks and visiting museums and fairs, Woudt has a strong preference for classic subjects, such as portraits and nudes. Throughout his work we can see references to illustrious periods from photography such as Surrealism and the documentary photography of the 1960s and 70s. Thanks to a self-taught, sophisticated use of both camera and post-production techniques, he gives his own graphic and wholly contemporary twist to the classical. In 2014 Woudt was chosen as New Dutch Photography Talent, and in the same year, as well as in 2015, he was nominated for an SO Award. He was named one of the biggest talents working today by the prestigious magazine The British Journal of Photography in 2016, furthering his position as a talent on the rise. In 2017 he won the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation Award.

Sanne Sannes remains one of the most captivating photographers of the 1960’s, having produced an outstanding body of work in the mere eight years he worked as a photographer, until his untimely death at the age of 30. Women were his favourite subject and an endless source of inspiration. In a nearly obsessive way, he photographed them during ecstatic sessions, often in the nude, recording their most intimate moments. This intimacy was emphasized in out of focus and underexposed photos. Sannes wasn’t afraid to experiment with his work; he felt no qualms about using ‘wrong’ methods or techniques while making his images. He received no formal education as a photographer, he was trained as a graphic artist and painter; he was free from the formal and technical restraints that imposed other photographers. In the end, it was the emotion and atmosphere that Sannes wanted to show with his work that was the most important to him. Sannes’s work is part of many private collections across the world, as well as part of museum collections, which include the Rijkmuseum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.