­­ IRENE GELFMAN GIVES US FOUR REASONS TO VISIT PINTA BAphoto

Pinta BAphoto returns to Pavilion 8 at La Rural with a fundamental question: what does a fair dedicated to the image mean today? Under the artistic direction and global curatorship of Irene Gelfman, this edition brings together galleries, artists, curators, collectors, and institutions from the region and around the world. This month, Buenos Aires is drawing much of the art world’s attention, with major fairs such as ARTEBA and AFFAIR taking place. Gelfman offers four reasons to visit BAphoto.

1. Celebrating 200 years of photography
The fair offers a journey through two centuries of images, with geographies and languages that interweave the region’s visual tradition with the medium’s most recent developments. It is about reexamining what photography does to the way we see. “We asked ourselves what it means to have a photography fair today, how the photographic apparatus has changed the way we look at and understand reality, what we’re talking about when we talk about photography in the twenty-first century,” says Gelfman.

2. Unique works by emerging and established artists
Here, new voices coexist with well-established careers. NEXT, co-curated by Facundo Belén and Virginia Martín, is devoted to emerging proposals, while the Special Projects, in contrast, revisit foundational figures. For Gelfman, the presence of Juan Gabriel Miño and Alberto Goldenstein at the fair is a “perfect coexistence” that “shows the diversity in prices, aesthetics, and explorations that photography makes possible.”

3. Strong international presence
Galleries from Spain, the United States, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay are participating, along with publishers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Peru, Chile, and Colombia. FORO, with 56 participants, adds voices such as Thyago Nogueira, of Instituto Moreira Salles; María Santoyo, director of PHotoESPAÑA; Eve Schillo, of LACMA; and Carolina Hausmann, of Fundación Casa Santa Ana. On this map, Argentine photography has its place: “Argentine photography holds a very relevant position in the international art scene, and we see it in various exhibitions abroad where Argentina always carries weight,” says Gelfman.

4. Curated photographic projects
The fair is conceived as a territory for research. RADAR, led by Mercedes Claus, explores practices that push the limits of photography. ATLAS, curated by Martín Bollati, brings together photobooks and artists’ editions in which the book stops being a support and becomes an experiment. Imágenes Latentes, by Sol Echevarría, and the Batato Barea retrospective complete a journey that steps outside the frame. “Pinta is a platform for the dissemination of Latin American art, where we understand that what matters is creating exhibition spaces that strengthen research carried out by curators and theorists. For that reason, in this edition we have expanded the presence of these projects to give them a larger space for outreach,” explains Gelfman.

Pinta BAphoto 2026 takes place October 22–25 at Pavilion 8 of La Rural, Buenos Aires, Argentina.