Now in its 12th installment, Paris Photo 2008 arrives in the European capital with a marked turn toward international photography. The 107 exhibitors that fill the great Carrousel du Louvre hall include a healthy mix of first-time contributors from around the world. Galleries new to the fair include India's Nature Morte, Stills Gallery of Australia, South Korea's Keumsan Gallery, and Cologne's Claudia Delank Gallery . But the exhibition's undoubted focus falls on its guest of honor, Japan, boasting the most comprehensive European exhibition of contemporary Japanese photography to date.

Currents of intimacy and sublimity underpin the wide selection of international photographers on display. Nowhere are these themes more apparent than in the juxtaposition of two photographs: one, a 1945 US Army Corps archival image of the bombing of Nagasaki, being shown by Munich's Daniel Blau gallery; and the other, Shomei Tomatsu's Blood & Rose 2, on display at London's Michael Hoppen Gallery. The former image documents in brilliantly haunting detail one of the worst acts of human violence, while the latter captures an intensely intimate embrace between lovers.

Yao Lu of Beijing's 798 Photo Gallery looks toward the sublime with epic images of the Chinese countryside that resemble delicate woodcuts, while UK documentary photographer Paul Graham captures the bewildered landscape of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Dutch bookseller Antiquariaat L. van Paddenburgh shows Bert Teunissen's grainy, black-and-white image of a dirt road that reaches out toward the horizon, hinting at endless possibility.

Other photographers confine their work to the microcosm of human relationships and everyday observation. Japanese artist Yuichi Hibi portrays a couple tenderly dancing; Henry Wessel, well known for chronicling the American West during the early 1970s, captures a businessman standing on the beach, contemplating the view. French artist Lise Sarfati and Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi commemorate two moments of personal reflection, and still-life photographers Laura Letinsky, of New York's Yancey Richardson Gallery, and Yuki Onodera, of Tokyo's Zeit Foto Salon, take alternatively minimalist and comic views of the detritus of everyday life.

Comedy and frivolity also have their place in 2008. Tokyo's Takashi Homma photographs a disgruntled dog right after its bath, and Bernard Demenge, a finalist in France's SFR Young Talents competition, delights with a series of hilarious self-portraits, tying string around his face or peeking through fake flowers. Martin Parr, of New York's Janet Borden, provides a fittingly cheeky view of an elderly woman obscured by a string of flags, rendered in saturated Technicolor. New Delhi's Dayanita Singh shows us a young Indian girl literally jumping for joy, and Paris' Denis Ozanne provides comedic precedent with Man Ray's jubilant and racy experiments in double exposure from the '30s.

Of the many smirk-worthy works on display, Magnum photographer Trent Parke's image of a young child kissing the lips of a doll is the most startling. At first glance the image appears to document innocuous toddler affection, but it soon reveals a far more sinister view of love in the absence of human touch. Even more disturbing is Japanese bad-boy Nobuyoshi Araki's portrayal of a bound young woman hanging upside-down like a wilting flower.

By contextualizing contemporary trends in the complex and contradictory history of photography, Paris Photo presents each work — no matter how violent, intimate, or beautiful — with an even-handed respect for the medium in all its diverse forms.

-Adda Birnir