The fair organisers
Bloomsbury Photograph Fair
Interview with Richard Meara
By Michael Diemar
Interview with Richard Meara
By Michael Diemar
Richard Meara is a veteran of photo tabletop fairs. Together with James Kerr, who exhibits under the name of Pump Park Vintage Photography, he runs Bloomsbury Photograph Fair, held twice a year at the Holiday Inn in London. But Meara is quick to point out,
– Strictly speaking, James Kerr and I aren’t fair promoters. Bloomsbury Photograph Fair rose from the ashes of the London Photograph Fair. It is a fair-within-a-fair, held under the umbrella of Etc Fairs’ Book Fair. We act as beaters, sign up exhibitors for our section and do what we can to bring in the photography collectors.
Most of the 15 – 20 dealers who exhibit at Bloomsbury Photography Fair were regulars at the London Photograph Fair, Meara tells me.
– The original fair was held for the first time on 12 September 1982 at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. It was the brainchild of Peter Agius LRPS, Fenton Medallist, and former Chairman of the Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society. It was ten years on from the first regular auction sales of photographs in London in 1971, and the market was growing. In the ensuing years, the fair grew to become the leading tabletop fair for photography in the world, attracting some 40 exhibitors from both sides of the Atlantic and hordes of collectors.
Meara, who started collecting photography in his teens, became a photography dealer in 1990 and in 1998, he took over the reins of the London Photograph Fair.
– I ran it for 14 years. I then decided that the fair needed a new approach and handed it over to James Kerr, who was far more skilled than I was when it came to IT and building websites. And then in 2015, James handed it over to a group of three promoters, who soon became a single promoter. The fair staggered on, and the promoter had this idea that the fair should “aim higher”, be more elegant and attract a wealthy crowd of art collectors, and in addition, become a two-day event. Well, it didn’t work. Long-time exhibitors bailed out, and in 2019, the London Photograph Fair was held for the very last time. James Kerr and I were very dismayed at how things had turned out. We felt we had to do something. At that point, it seemed the only way to start something up was to piggyback off an existing fair. Etc Fairs ran a successful book fair in London, and luckily for us, they allowed Bloomsbury Photograph Fair to become part of it.
The market has changed a lot since 1982, Meara explains.
– I think the golden age, with streams of wonderful material, especially 19th material, was in the early days when Peter Agius ran the fair. Gradually, wealthy collectors made their presence felt, and there was less material. In the late 90s, there was increasing competition from the web, not least eBay. And then came Brexit, which led to most dealers and a lot of collectors from the European continent giving the London fair a miss because of customs and paperwork. Still, there are usually a few European dealers at the fair. And these days, there’s a greater variety of material, a lot of 20th century material as well as 19th century material.
In addition to exhibiting at fairs, Meara also produces a catalogue
– I have produced it for just over twenty years, and I’m working on number 35 now. The question for all of us at this point is, how are we going to attract more people, especially young people, to vintage photography? I think we must all become better at providing context, telling the interesting stories behind individual photographs, because photography has a lot of potential. It’s still a very affordable medium to collect.