As soft music crooned through the halls of a softly lit, glittering Grand Palais in Paris Tuesday evening, VIPs trickled in for a private dinner hosted by the Prix Pictet as part of the Paris Photo fair, which opens to the public on November 12. Wandering through the fair’s aisles featuring 246 exhibitors this year, it was unsettling to imagine that just a three weeks ago, Art Basel Paris had to evacuate the very same venue. Booths were dismantled early, the night before protests planned for October 24. The fair’s closure two days sooner than planned was unprecedented and came as a shock to many, ultimately necessitating Art Basel to offer a 20 percent discount on booth fees to all exhibitors.

Though civil unrest in France has not returned to the fever pitch experienced in October, and the government has exerted some greater control over the situation, demonstrations are continuing here, in an effort to bring attention to rising costs of living and under-funded public schools. How then, are Paris Photo organizers and exhibitors navigating it all?

“We are, of course, watching the situation closely to see how things evolve,” Photo Paris director Florence Bourgeois told ARTnews. “At this stage there is nothing new to report, and nothing alarming. In fact, for two weeks the demonstrations have been taking place peacefully, and generally in the east of Paris. So we are not alarmed, and we remain vigilant so that we can respond if necessary.”

Bourgeois said that the fair has closed early once before, after the 2015 terror attacks in Paris; despite lacking appropriate insurance at the time, organizers reimbursed 20 percent of booth fees. “But that’s no indication of what might happen in 2026,” she said. “It was an extremely different situation to that of the current protests.” (She declined to comment further on the fair’s current insurance policy.)

“If we ever do face something along those lines, our decision would be made based on protecting everyone’s safety. That’s the priority,” she added.

For German gallerist Thomas Zander, who exhibited at the shortened Art Basel Paris and is now back for Paris Photo, the city is the biggest draw. “It’s strange in a way, but I love Paris,” he said, characterizing this year’s Art Basel Paris as inspiring a “difficult feeling” in him. The early closure cost him “two good days” of sales, he said, adding, “Now we are in a better situation this week, and there are not so many demonstrations in the center, and it’s quieter than the week of Art Basel Paris.”

At the fair, his booth has on view what he described as “museum-quality works” because “all the museum people come here, to Paris Photo.” This includes a set of six dye transfer unique master prints by William Eggleston from 1968 to 1973, priced together at €1 million ($1.11 million); a rare series of 41 vintage gelatin silver prints of pinball machines by Candida Höfer, which are being sold as a single display for €600,000 ($665,570); and 16 works from Zoe Leonard’s “Analogue” series (1998–2009) about New York’s changing Lower East Side and offered for a total of €140,000 ($155,300).

In terms of price point, Paris Photo is a much more accessible fair than Art Basel Paris, where artworks are frequently offered in the six-, seven-, and even eight-figures. While some exhibitors at Paris Photo might make a sale over $1 million, the prices for other works can start as low as a few hundred dollars, with artist-signed books even costing under $100.

Despite having lower prices than the markets for contemporary painting and sculpture, the photography market has not been immune to the rest of the cooling that the global art market has faced in the past few years, according to Bourgeois, who said that more than ever closing a sale “comes down to a question of quality, which is why we’ve worked hard to represent the best that photography has produced over the last 200 years.” Even still, “for top quality photographic works, prices remain high and are not falling,” she added.

Several dealers said that approachability and a perceived distancing from the billionaire’s club of collectors often plays to the favor of Paris Photo, as protestors demand greater social equality. (In October, there were calls to protest outside Art Basel Paris and “take back the Grand Palais” from the wealthy few.)

“By taking part in a fair, we are not ignoring the realities of life around us, nor disconnected from it,” Bourgeois said. “We also represent part of the economy: there are galleries that make a living from this, that represent artists, give them visibility and support them by selling their work. I believe all of this is very important.”

“I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that Paris Photo doesn’t have quite the same image as Art Basel,” Paris dealer Anne-Laure Buffard said. “It’s a fair that has less of a connotation symbolizing a certain concentration of wealth, or an elitism reserved for the extremely rich.” With the recent closure in mind in light of the protesters, which have calmed, Buffard said, “We’re all trying to stay optimistic.”

She is presenting salt-washed, crystalline photographs taken in the Dead Sea, on the border between Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank, by Ilanit Illouz, priced from about $2,000 to $17,750; as well as painted and drawn photographs by Vasantha Yogananthan chronicling the impact of tourism on the northern Indian region of the Himalayas, priced between about $3,300 and $11,100.

Elsewhere, Pace Gallery is offering a jewel of a 1926 vintage gelatin silver print on a treated postcard by André Kertész for $500,000. It is thought to be one of only six or seven in the world. On the more affordable end, medium-sized still life photographs by Kiki Smith have already sold for $8,500 apiece.

“It’s been a very strong first day, with a number of significant sales made in the first hours of the fair, reflecting the strong demand for photography,” Pace senior vice president Lauren Panzo said. “It’s particularly encouraging to see so many new collectors coming through” alongside existing clients.

On Tuesday evening, Panzo told ARTnews that while the gallery has considered the possibility of further interruptions to the fair from ongoing protests, she is “personally not concerned—there are always protests here,” and the current ones seem to be more “under control.” She expects that over the weekend there will be lines to get into the Grand Palais as there have been in years past. “People in Paris love photography. I think there’s such a love for this medium. It’s so accessible,” she said. “Photography is different.”

Greeting visitors upon entering the Grand Palais is a large installation of works spanning the career of German photographer Thomas Ruff, a collaboration by his five galleries: David Zwirner, Konrad Fischer, Mai 36, Lia Rumma, Sprüth Magers. Other highlights a selection spotlighting women photographers, who now make up 38 percent of artists represented at the fair, up from 20 percent when the program launched in 2018, and around 100 newly acquired and unseen photographs from the Centre Pompidou’s collection. The Prix Pictet also now has a dedicated booth, featuring works by this year’s winner: Valérie Belin’s Still Life, showing an accumulation of plastic goods and memento mori, and Alfredo Jaar’s The End, which documents the receding Great Salt Lake in Utah.

A curated selection of artworks spread throughout the Grand Palais represents every decade since the creation of photography, which is marking its 200th anniversary this year. On one end is Serge Plantureux, which has on view what is considered the world’s oldest known existing photograph, an original print of photography pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras (1825).

On the other end is an installation of works by Alessandro Calabrese in the booth of Milan’s Viasaterna gallery. Priced between $2,440 to $8,430, these dreamy works are made by printing images on the “wrong” side of glossy photo paper, resulting in painterly, electric-hued prints. “In the end, it creates a sort of watercolor painting, but [made] automatically,” Calabrese told ARTnews. “All my research is based on looking for the limit of the figurative side and the realism in photography, and trying to challenge it.”