At Michael Hoppen Gallery, we are enlivened by the prospect of a plethora of great exhibitions opening this year around the world, that will focus on great photography from Japan. We continue to support Japanese photography and still believe it to be some of the best photography in the world. We have championed Japanese photography for the past 24 years, and their unquestionable talents will be fully exposed for all to see in a major museum exhibition in New York this autumn, and at the Bibliothèque National in Paris, this September. Furthermore, the inimitable Ishiuchi Miyako’s long awaited retrospective at MEP, also in Paris, will coincide with the 29th edition of Paris Photo. There is lots this year to look forward to.

We are also very excited to announce the launch Sohei Nishino’s new Diorama of Venice which will be shown for the first time at TEFAF Maastricht in March. Our project, Cities, like dreams is a collaboration with Daniel Crouch who will juxtapose his rare early vintage maps alongside Sohei’s contemporary dioramas. We do hope you will be able to visit us in The Netherlands. TEFAF is one of the preeminent fairs in the world.

We are also very proud to announce that the extraordinary and previously unknown Lee Miller and Cecil Beaton album we showed last year, is now part of the Bodleian Library’s permanent collection. The Library will use their exceptional conservation department to preserve this historically important album and make it available to students and academics alike to study. We could not have hoped for a better home for Lee Millers work.

Photography is clearly still one of the most important mediums of the modern age. Despite the concerns that Ai will seep into all corners of our medium and remove the traditional craft of making a photograph – I am absolutely sure that raw talent and new technology can find common collaborative ground, and produce new wonderful and interesting work. We are in early days. I remember early photoshop initially looking very unappealing until it was mastered by talented and responsible artists who found new and creative ways to use it to great effect.

I am convinced there will be a similar resolution with Ai. However, it is also interesting to note the huge resurgence of interest in analogue photography by dedicated and new young practitioners. I pray that the makers of analogue equipment and the companies who produce the materials needed to create analogue photographs, will support their efforts.

Michael Hoppen
London, January 2026. 

Cities, like people, are full of contradictions. They promise order but grow through chaos. They are built on careful plans yet shaped by imagination and memory. Cities, like dreams, a collaboration between Michael Hoppen Gallery and Daniel Crouch Rare Books for TEFAF Maastricht 2026, explores how cities have been pictured and understood across three centuries - how they have been drawn from above and experienced from within.

The exhibition brings two very different ways of seeing together. Monumental eighteenth‑century town plans - made at a time when faith in reason and measurement was at its height - are shown next to Sohei Nishino’s large‑scale photographic dioramas, dreamlike reconstructions of the same cities created from thousands of individual photographs. These pairings reveal what the city has always been: both a system and an emotion, something that can be mapped and yet never truly contained.

The fair will mark the first presentation of Nishino’s latest Diorama map: Venice. This fragile and unique city has now been preserved in over 450 rolls of film and will be exhibited alongside key cities created over the past two decades. Full details will be released in the coming weeks.

Fair Details