Returning once again to the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris Photo acts as the ultimate arbiter of new styles and subjects in photography. European galleries feature prominently, with a significant contingent from Italy, this year's guest of honor. New York's presence is also strong, and the fair includes galleries from as far afield as Japan and South Africa.

China, one of the most exciting emerging markets in the art sphere, is extensively represented. DoDo Jin Ming's painterly photos of seascapes awash with drama and danger are displayed by New York's Laurence Miller Gallery. Marella Gallery, with spaces in Milan and Beijing, showcases Jiang Zhi's surreal and futuristic series Let There Be Light, which includes hyperreal, rainbow-lit cities and whimsical yet disturbing nighttime scenes.

Documentary is once again well explored. Paris Photo regular Simon Norfolk's hauntingly empty images of war-torn landscapes are presented by the Photographers' Gallery from London. At Paris-based Galerie Anne de Villepoix and Magnum Photos, Alessandra Sanguinetti exhibits The Adventures of Guille and Belinda, tender portraits of a pair of adolescent cousins, alongside her classic series depicting life on an Argentinean farm, On the Sixth Day. From Cape Town, Michael Stevenson exhibits Zanele Muholi's Being, powerful studies of hidden relationships within South Africa's marginalized black lesbian community.

Among the Europeans, the ongoing trend for large-scale images of urban landscapes continues with Olivo Barbieri's dreamy photographs of leisure activities, ranging from sporting events to museum visits, on view from Rome's Brancolini Grimaldi Arte Contemporanea. Stéphane Couturier, who's exhibiting with Galerie Polaris from Paris, redirects this style toward explorations of growth and change in cities, capturing construction sites, lonely office towers, and limitless stretches of tract homes.

In contrast to the documentary work, playful and fantastical images also have a presence at the fair. With her Fables project, Karen Knorr fuses photographs with digitally generated imagery to create tableaux inspired by fairy tales — foxes, rats, and pigeons awkwardly wander through sumptuous rococo French architecture. These works, marriages of nature and culture, can be found at Paris' Les Filles du Calvaire booth.

Paris Photo gives a snapshot not of the emerging underground, but of the players who have transformed photography from a lesser cousin of fine art into one of the most expansive areas for collecting and exhibiting. With more than 100 galleries and publishers and a plethora of talks, competitions, and subsidiary exhibitions, the fair offers a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in global photography.

-JC