Paris. Photo.

Large black and sepia-toned butterfly images, platinum-printed on Japanese rice paper, pulled me into Persiehl and Heine Gallery's space at the Paris Photo expo several weeks ago. A similarly stunning but even larger image of a fish hung on an adjacent wall. These stark and uncluttered photographs, richly-hued and complex, made me want to know how they were created. I looked over my shoulder to see that my friend Sarah and her husband Ward were a step ahead of me, deep in conversation with Gregor Torsz, the Berlin-based artist who made them. I sidled up to Sarah to listen in, loving this conversation about his printing process and the hand-made Japanese gampi paper he uses. He had given Sarah and Ward a small book prepared by his gallery, and Sarah asked him for one for me. This was the first of many memorable moments for me at this year's Paris Photo exposition.

Now in its 25th year, Paris Photo is a four-day event held in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, at the Grand Palais Ephémère, attended by over 60,000 people. This was the first Paris Photo for my husband and me; our friends Sarah and Ward were there last year, our guides for figuring out the best way to navigate its labyrinth of delights. In the front of the temporary building housing the event while the Grand Palais vraiment is being renovated, white-walled cubicle spaces were inhabited by 184 galleries from around the world. On display were thousands of photographs curated by these galleries that represented over a thousand artists from more than 30 countries. It was hard not to notice the heavy skew towards white male photographers, dead or alive, whose work was exhibited and for sale—and to note these demographics for what they might mean. Most artists were from Europe and America. One-third were women. Only 18 photographers (of any gender) were showing work for the first time. In the back half of the building were spaces for panel discussions and, of greater interest to me, tables and tables of photobook publishers selling their wares.

Over our two days there, my heart and head overflowed with new ways of seeing the world and photography as an art form. I had moments of panic, feeling lost in this sea of images, needing to assure myself that the two days we'd planned to spend there would be plenty of time to see everything I wanted. Eventually, I found a rhythm of spending a lot of time with work I loved and much less with some that I did not. But, I tried to look at all of it.

The art scene of gallerists, curators, buyers, and publishers was nowhere near as interesting to me as the people making the photographs. The vibe of the expo was such that even as a shy introvert, l continued to find myself in easy conversations with photographers whose work I admired, like Gregor Torsz--and later with Naohiro Ninomiya represented there by the Ibasho Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium.

As I was looking at Ninomiya's exquisite waterfall on the wall behind him, he noticed the Yashika-mat medium format camera I had hung around my neck, hoping to find something interesting to photograph in the crowded expo. He said, "That was the same camera I had when I was growing up in Japan. Seeing it makes me feel very sentimental." I told him how beautiful his waterfall was and how gorgeous the paper he used. He took me around to the other side of the wall to show me three panels of carp images. The carp in those photographs, he told me, swam in the same waters used for making the paper he used to print their images. He said, "This is poetic to me." "To me, too," I said.

We also talked about how he made the large photogram of his mother's kimono hanging near the delicate carp. I found my courage to ask him if I could take a photograph of him with my Yashika-mat. He was quite surprised but agreed to it. I got the impression he was not used to being asked for a photo, or at least not one taken on anything other than a phone camera.

Another photographer whose work I discovered there was Catherine Balet, represented by Galerie Thierry Bigaignon. The gallerist explained to me that Balet makes large pictures, beginning with a digitized image of a painting, but then she layers multiple digital photographic pictures over it. A brilliantly-colored triptych of the summer landscape near her home covered most of a wall--part of a four-season series. (It sold that day and was replaced by the autumn piece the next day.) The multiplicity of images created pictures so deep that I never wanted to stop looking into them.

I texted Sarah to come to see Balet’s work because we are working on a multiple exposure project together. She did come, after I'd left, and was able to talk to Balet for quite some time. She bought Balet's book, Moods in a Room, for each of us, mine an early Christmas present so that we might find inspiration for our own work.

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Paris-Photo's history dovetails with the explosion of the photobook movement during the past two decades, and I would venture to say that each has contributed to the success of the other. Paris Photo showcases Aperture magazine's annual First Book, Best Book, and Catalog competition, announcing winners on the second day of the expo. Multiple book signings occurred hourly at the publishers' tables.

One of the most anticipated signings was for Dior by another Sarah, French model and fashion photographer Sarah Moon. I have known of Moon's work only for the past couple of years, but I am now part of her large fan base, in love with the otherworldly aesthetics of her images created with alternative printing processes. I did not buy one of those enormous books for her to sign. I did, however, show up to see her at the Delpire Press table, and yes, I took a photograph of her. She is a gentle, gracious, very present 81-year-old with short curls that hung over her lovely eyes as she bent forward to autograph her work.

The book I bought, however, was Echo by Jungjin Lee. I recognized her name on Spectator Books' display table after seeing two large prints of hers on the walls of  Gallerie Camera Obscura's exhibit space. Their non-descript names, Thing 66 and Thing 21, belied the powerful beauty of dark silhouettes of the objects against the textured cream surface they inhabited. Without knowing anything of Lee's work beforehand or exactly why I felt I must buy her book, I spent the next few days absorbing the story of the artist, the book's gorgeous contents, and the design of the book itself--entranced by (and jealous of) the clarity of Lee's artistic vision.

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What was Paris Photo to me besides an excellent reason to visit my good friend Sarah and my favorite city of Paris? Besides an overwhelming kaleidoscope of human interaction around the material and conceptual stuff of photographic art? I was looking for beauty and photographers who might have something aesthetically or technically in common with me. Photographers who used film, who printed on a variety of papers or fabric, who might not hang their work under glass, who were drawn to soft focus, double exposures or layering, and who sought what was ethereal or ephemeral. I became absorbed in the wild imaginal wanderings of people drawn to the same paths as I was. I was also happy to find new attractions to work or techniques I had yet to learn of before the expo.

In looking at so many photographs in one place and one time, I got clearer about what work sings out to me, and I also got clearer about what kinds of work I want to be doing--and what I do not want to be doing. This direction, for me, is about both content and process. The message and medium are entwined. I want my work to have at least as much process after the shutter has been released as before it is. To paraphrase an Ansel Adams' quote, I want my work to be picture "making" more than picture "taking." For me, this translates into using film, heavy editing as needed, printing on textured surfaces, displaying it in a way that honors the materiality of it, and the possibility of multiple images in conversation with each other—all necessitating a lot of experimentation..

Looking at more of the kind of photographic art that resonates with work I have made and imagined making, I gained confidence in the possibility of outside acceptance I assumed it needed to be exhibited or published. And Sarah and I found much inspiration, though sometimes overwhelmingly so, for our collaborative "double exposure" project that we were continuously conceptually evolving during our time in Paris.

I found people who had followed their hearts to use particular materials, or processes, or means of showing their work that best captured a moment or told a story they were compelled to tell. This was especially helpful to me after having just opened my first solo gallery show. I experienced many doubts while making the pieces in it. I wondered how well they would be received because I was printing on fabric, sometimes sewing pieces together, sometimes layering one piece over another, and nailing both into a wooden rectangle to hang them. To my relief, the response I got to my show proved my doubts unfounded--many people found the work emotionally resonant and wanted to know more about how I made the work.

It was a happy surprise to hear Gregor Torsz, a photographer successful enough to be showing work at Paris Photo, echo these feelings of pre-exhibit anxiety when we talked about his beautiful and unusual prints. He said, "After so much time spent alone working on these very time-consuming pieces, using these thin, fragile papers, working large, with various alternative printing processes, it is such a pleasure to be here with these images on the wall, talking to you about them, hearing that you like them. While you are alone working on them, you don't know what others will think. I'm so appreciative of your interest in them."

But then it made sense to me that even someone this successful would continue to feel some unease in the making of his work. Art always seeks an edge that demands something new from us. It requires a renegotiation of what the artist needs to say and what the viewer expects/wants from her.

And in the end, this is what Paris Photo meant to me, this revelation. Naturally, I was interested in the spectacle of it all. I spent some time fantasizing about a wider audience for my work, gallery representation that would get me into this show, a book publisher, and, as long as I was daydreaming, a book award. I was happy to share this experience with Sarah as we continued interrogating our collaborative work. I enjoyed being in the presence of a few celebrities like Sarah Moon. But I also learned that the edge is where I will always need to be--and that everyone who creates something new is there with me.