The city of Düsseldorf will mark the 200th anniversary of photography with a dedicated presentation at Paris Photo, running from 12 to 15 November at the Grand Palais. Under the title 'Düsseldorf and Photography', the stand in the fair's digital sector will examine photography's transformation into a cross-media art form, according to a KUNSTFORUM International report published on 19 October.

The presentation is flanked by a monumental installation by Thomas Ruff and by institutional collaborations: works by international winners of the Bernd and Hilla Becher Prize will be shown, and the Goethe-Institut will present works from the classes of Peter Piller and Josephine Pryde at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. A talks programme will include the artist Ed Atkins, alongside a preview of the 2027 biennale 'düsseldorf photo+'.

The Paris stand is initiated by the Kommission Fotostadt Düsseldorf, and led by the city's cultural office under Stephan Macháč together with Kim-Camille Kreu. Düsseldorf's long-grown scene of artistic photography, the organisers argue, makes the city the natural future home of the German Photo Institute.

The report quotes Macháč on the curatorial thesis: within artistic processes, photography is increasingly deployed as a context-shifting element inside installative practice, and the Paris presentation traces the consequences of that shift for how the medium is understood now and in the future. The presentation sits within a larger municipal claim: Düsseldorf, the source notes, has grown a photographic scene over decades that justifies its ambition to host Germany's future Photo Institute, and Paris Photo becomes its international stage for making that case. For fairgoers, the stand offers a condensed map of the Düsseldorf position: a city where the medium learned to leave the frame behind, where installation has become a native language, and where the Becher legacy continues to be renegotiated by each generation of artists passing through the academy.