Albumen Gallery to showcase work from award-winning artists at Photo London Fair and The Phair in Turin this Spring
Photo London brings the finest international photography to the British capital every year. The Phair, an annual event dedicated to showcasing photography in Turin that presents the best historic and vintage works while also spotlighting fresh perspectives in photography.
Photo London Fair – Psychological Landscapes (15-19 May)
For the 2025 Edition of Photo London Fair, Albumen Gallery will showcase three award winning international artists – Kristoffer Axén, Alireza Movahedi and Mari Amman – all of which share an emotive and striking thematic genre within their respective work that is best described as ‘Psychological Landscapes’.
For each, the lens landscape is a mere starting point for highly subjective artistic exploration. Transcending the physical and visual characteristics of the environment the landscape becomes a vehicle for reflecting and expressing emotional or psychological states of mind, human connections and interpretations of time and memory.
In ‘Silent Vistas’, his latest series of photographs, Swedish painter and photographer Kristoffer Axén lets the textural aspect of imagery take a larger part of the narrative. Commenting on his artistic approach Kristoffer Axén says “Details distract too much, telling a different story than what I’m interested in. I rather want the sharpness to be in the texture or in the abstract elements.” Layers of abstract elements interact with the photographs creating windows of meditation – silent vistas to a world behind the image.
A recurring theme in Iranian photographer Alireza Movahedi’s work is the exploration of emptiness and its impact on the human psyche. Through his minimalist approach he captures barren landscapes, isolated figures, and subtle details, creating an atmosphere of silence, solitude, and existential isolation with a sense of dark foreboding. His images typically feature a muted colour palette, enhancing the ethereal and dreamlike quality of the work. Compositions are carefully composed, with a strong emphasis on the interplay between light and shadow. By manipulating the visual elements within his frames, he creates a sense of tension, ambiguity and intrigue alongside feelings of abandonment and isolation.
Norwegian American photographer Mari Amman uses natural elements and landscapes as abstract allegorical devices to express a view of nature for understanding multi-layered nuances. A recurring theme in her images is how vision relates to place and memory. Through Mari Amman’s lens, the landscape is abstracted into textures, movement, shape, and moods that often lend her images a meditative stylisation.
Albumen Gallery at The Phair – Architecture and Landscape (8-11 May)
For The Phair 2025 Albumen Gallery brings together two contemporary photographers, who explore very different subjects in their work.
Peter M. Cook, a British photographer who lives and works in Japan, is known for his award-winning architecture photography. And Mathieu Chaze, a French photographer who lives and works in England, has made a name for himself with his atmospheric black and white landscape photography.
The juxtaposition of the two artists and their respective works highlights the contrast between visual and aesthetic dimensions: geometry vs. fluidity, static vs. evolving, material vs. elemental. Yet, by the same token, this accentuated juxtaposition creates a vibrant visual dialogue between different ways of ‘seeing’ the world
around us. Both architecture photography and landscape photography represent established genres with a rich tradition in the history of photography. In that context, bringing together two very different ends of the spectrum of photography not only highlights different aesthetic approaches to how we see the world but also initiates a visual conversation about the medium of photography itself.
Stephan Schmid, Director of Albumen Gallery, said:
“We are delighted to bring together three outstanding accomplished artists for this year’s edition of Photo London. Their work each carries their own distinguished approach and style however one common ground is their exploration of the psychological landscapes within photography – using the photographic backdrop and setting as symbolism of the human psyche, time, history and concepts of existential isolation.
The artists presenting at The Phair equally have their own distinguishing style. It is wonderful to present such varied fields of photography – architecture and landscape are well established genres within a rich tradition of photography history – Peter and Mathieu’s offer a striking and alternative new focus on those genres.’’
Albumen Gallery was set up in London in 2013. Specializing in 20th century and contemporary photography Albumen Gallery responds to shifting trends in how photographic art is experienced and purchased by collectors. In a world where online immediacy and global availability become accepted and expected Albumen Gallery eschews a permanent brick and mortar gallery space targeting through its online exhibition programme a wider international audience. The gallery’s online presence is firmly coupled with a dedicated personalised customer and advisory service.
The breadth of our portfolio reflects diversity and tastes of the collector base we cater to. Albumen Gallery clients range from public and private museums, corporate collections and experienced collectors to those who are embarking upon their first photographic purchase. Discovering and nurturing new talent is an important aspect of our work. We introduce our collector base to emerging artist, who – in the footsteps of the great masters of photography and in a creative dialogue with the history of the medium – create exciting new contemporary art making use of the rich and wide-ranging possibilities the medium offers. Pioneering the online gallery without walls concept, Albumen Gallery is continuously developing the format and potential of online exhibitions as an accepted platform for exhibiting art photography. The Albumen Gallery Publishing series accompanies each exhibition with a dedicated photo book.
About The Artists
Kristoffer Axen – Albumen Gallery
Kristoffer Axén, born 1984 in Stockholm/Sweden. He studied photography at the International Center of Photography in New York between 08-09 and has been exhibited internationally in group shows at galleries like Aperture (N.Y), Musée de E’lysée (Lausanne), The Camera Club (N.Y), Carla Sozzani (Milan) & Azzedine Alaïa (Paris). His work has been included in festivals in China, Denmark, France & Canada and he is published in magazines like The British Journal of Photography, Zoom Magazine, Art Review & Italian Vouge. He was selected for the ʻreGeneration2: Tomorrowʼs Photographer Todayʼ traveling exhibition and catalogue and has been shortlisted for the Lacoste Elysée Prize, the Winner of the Ten Best at Ten (2011)
annual Competition and receiver of an Honorable Mention from the New York Photo Festival 2009. He is in several permanent public and private collections and was awarded with a director fellowship scholarship from I.C.P (ʻ09)
Alireza Movahedi – Albumen Gallery
Alireza Movahedi (b.1986) is an Iranian photographer who lives and works in Teheran. In his work Alireza Movahedi seeks to use the visual medium to address and reflect on fundamental existential questions. His images could be described as psychological landscapes that simultaneously deploy and deconstruct commonly shared symbols and tropes that form part of cultural history. Movahedi uses photography as an aesthetic tool to express states of mind and inner reality. Deploying archetypal concepts and tropes gives visual vocabulary to create unique psychological landscapes.
Frequent use of photomontage and photo-manipulation techniques allows him to create digitally staged landscapes that explore the experience of an inner reality versus an objective outer reality. Movahedi creates artwork with a Hauntology approach believing that artwork evokes the aesthetic sensuous states of the past, the unconscious of the subject (audience) establishes a deep connection with the spirit of that artwork and often manipulates his work so that the audience feels that they are viewing an analog image – distorting their sense of reality and connection to time.
Mari Amman (b. 1984) is an artist working with the secular and sacred. She works with images, installations, poetry, performance, painting, sculpture, video, textiles and design. Geological Empathy and Sublime Rheology became concepts underscoring her considerations of the imaginary realm in social and physical realities. An EIT Culture Creativity Expert Evaluator, Amman collaborates with biology, technological and geological scientists, music, architecture, and culture professionals.
About Peter Cook – Albumen Gallery
Born in 1967 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, Peter initially trained as an architect before deciding to become a professional photographer. After working in editorial and fashion for a number of years, he eventually specialised in architectural photography. In 1998 he moved to Tokyo and since then has devoted himself to photographing buildings across Japan.
Recently, he has embarked on a project documenting the buildings of the renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, including Kuma’s recent design for the new V&A in Dundee, Scotland, and the new 2020 Olympic Stadium, Tokyo. Peter’s work is in the photography collection of |RIBA as well as many private and corporate collections worldwide.
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The Tokyo photos we will exhibit at Phair are are also in the magnificent photo book ‘Edo’, published by Hatje Cantz (2018)
About Mathieu Chaze – Albumen Gallery
Born in 1982 in Burgundy, France and now lives and works in the UK. After growing up in Lyon and studying law in France and in London, he started working first in Paris and then in London. During this time, he met his wife Amber and became the father of Edward and Hugo, now aged 11 and 10 respectively. A little under four years ago, he left behind his career in the City to dedicate himself fully to photography and to his family. He homeschooled his boys whilst working on his first photography book “Rock, Paper, Scissors”. The boys now back at school, Mathieu has turned his lens towards the landscape and bodies of water as he works on his next project.
Wobneb Magazine 