“Just because something’s new to me, doesn’t mean it’s undiscovered”: Charlotte Jansen on curating Photo London Discovery

Discovery is a hefty word, particularly concerning the discovery of artists. What makes someone undiscovered? Who gets to be the ‘discoverer’? And are artists ever actually ‘discovered’, or have they always been there, outside the scope of a narrow lens? Charlotte Jansen has been wrestling with these questions over recent months as she’s been preparing to curate Discovery, the section of Photo London dedicated to emerging artists.

2024 is Jansen’s Photo London Discovery debut, but it’s far from her first curatorial rodeo. In 2019, she organised the photography-heavy show ‘Birth’ at TJ Boulting Gallery. She’s also the author of photography books: Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021) and was formerly an editor at Elephant magazine, all of which flexed different muscles in talent scouting. “People approach curation in different ways. Some look very technically at the hanging and the viewing experience. All of that is important, but what I’m most interested in is connecting ideas,” she tells me over the phone.

Although Jansen has been peripherally involved in previous editions of Photo London, curating the Discovery section was another beast. “It has its own identity within the fair, and it feels different to other emerging art platforms,” she says. “It’s not just a mini section – you’ve got 25 projects happening, which is quite expansive.”

Much of Jansen’s interests centre on tracking down new talent, the power – good, bad and ugly – of the gaze, and the question of whether who’s taking the photo can be just as important as the image itself. Since the beginning of her career, she has attended as many photography shows, fairs, and festivals as her senses can process. But she also stresses the importance of a global network to tap into grassroots systems. In a climate of digital image sharing and mass knowledge exchange, it’s sometimes easy to forget that not everything worth seeing exists on the internet; that maybe an artist labelled by some as ‘emerging’ has in fact already emerged, just not through the channels, geography or communities within our immediate reach. “The idea of discovery [in the West] can be like, ‘Oh, we didn’t know about this, so now we’re discovering it!’, but actually, a lot of these artists have been working for a really long time,” Jansen explains. “It’s been a learning curve for me that not everyone feels ‘overlooked’, even if they haven’t had the museum show or big auction sales, because their work is martyred to other communities. Just because I don’t know something or it’s new to me, doesn’t mean it’s undiscovered.”

One of the focuses of this year’s Discovery section is self-portraiture, a subject in which Jansen is well versed (Girl on Girl focusing on self-image and the female gaze). Norwegian photographers Maria Pasenau and Tonje Birkeland, who share a studio building in Bergen and are now sharing Glydenpris’ booth at Photo London, occupy opposite poles of the self-portrait spectrum. Birkeland turns the genre into period drama, inventing fictional 19th-century female explorers who voyage on real expeditions to locations such as Tibet and the Arctic. This long, involved process sees herself playing characters clad in meticulously researched 19th-century attire and shot on cameras from the era. Conversely, Pasenau, known for a project in which she photographed herself every day for a year in a mix of emotional states, takes a more immediate, improvised approach.

Another recurring theme in Discovery is long-term projects. Californian artist J.K. Lavin will present an installation comprising Polaroid self-portraits, taken of herself every day for eight years. German Birgit Glatzel is showing Friends of Friends of Friends, a 15-year project in which she travelled the world to meet everyone she has ever been connected with, even loosely, and shoots them in their local environment. “It’s an interesting counterpoint to the idea that photography is this very fast, urgent medium,” Jansen explains.

In her curation, Jansen also confronts age, and its irrelevance in the context of emerging art. “It’s often conflated with the word ‘young’, and I don’t think that’s a true reflection of what it means,” she says. “A lot of people have been working for a really long time in a quiet or low-key way or haven’t had the recognition they deserve because of societal structures etc. Obviously, there’s a big thing in the art world now of paying dues to overlooked artists or artists that just haven’t reached the level that they could have. Now, the aperture has widened.”

Discovery presents a generational cross-section of artists ranging from their 20s to their 80s. “I actually didn’t even think about it, it just happened naturally, because people don’t always get their chances or breakthroughs at the same time,” says Jansen.

Despite its expansive curatorial vision, Photo London is, ultimately, a commercial fair; costs must be covered, profits must be made, and although the commercialisation of photography can present challenges, photographers still need to sell work. But, how can the quest for sales be balanced with creating a show that doesn’t scrimp on depth? “I think they should go hand in hand,” Jansen says, “If something’s interesting, and we’re able to speak passionately about it, that kind of sells it. You do have to be responsible in selecting what is going to be able to sustain itself. Everyone is investing good money in being at the fair and taking the risk to do that.”

Jansen explains that Photo London attracts experts from all corners of photography to advise on what should be spotlit, and she urges collectors to “buy with their hearts” as well as their nose for an investment. “We might have to be the tastemakers to change people’s tastes, or direct them away from photographs of Kate Moss or whatever is considered conventionally commercial,” says Jansen. “I can stand behind all of the works in Discovery and say that I think they’re beautiful, and I would buy any of them myself, and I will!”

Charlotte and Photo London associate director Sophie Parker identified a problem. “We realised that it was difficult for many emerging artists to come to the fair because there’s still a lack of representation for photographers in commercial art galleries,” Jansen explains. Although the gallery model is still at the core of the fair, artists are increasingly questioning the effectiveness of conventional systems; one size is not fit for all. The solution was Positions, a separate exhibition space within Discovery for independent, unrepresented artists to converge around a given theme. This year, five female artists including Turkish Pinar Yolaçan and Taiwanese-born Yolanda Y. Liou will focus on beauty standards for women, not just in body type, but culture and ethnicity. “Photography is such a human medium,” she says. “What’s amazing is to see how many different generations, nationalities, religions and those working in different places are interested in a lot of the same fundamental things, and using the camera in interesting ways to express that,” she says.

This year at Photo London, the act of discovery isn’t just for the curator, it’s also for you, the viewer. Whether you’ve heard of these artists or not, it doesn’t mean they’re undiscovered, they just might not have been discovered by you, yet.