“Photography is still at an attractive price point compared to other media,” said New York dealer Robert Burge. “My friends at Pace tell me that they can still sell things if they’re under $100,000. Well, here almost everything is under $100,000.” Burge was showing some of the most striking new work at the fair, beautifully detailed shots of different species of dragonflies taken by John Woolf, a photography specialist at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Priced at $1,500 in editions of 25, none had sold yet, but interest was high.

The booth of Chelsea’s Danziger Projects was generating a lot of buzz as well, featuring penetrating images of Malian families by Seydou Keita, for $8,000; unusual pictures of an albino model by New York photographer Tanyth Berkeley; and glitzy portraits by Annie Leibovitz, all priced at $7,500. The Leibovitzes, none of which had sold, included a scantily clad Scarlett Johansson, in an edition of 25, and a unique portrait of our new president. On the floor, Danziger also had the shot, by AP photographer Manny Garcia, on which Shepard Fairey controversially based his ubiquitous Obama “Hope” image (and which has gotten Danziger lots of attention as of late). Priced at $1,200 in an edition of 200, none had sold at the fair, despite success at the gallery, gallery owner James Danziger said. Instead, he’d had luck with “a dozen or so mostly vintage” prints averaging about $5,000 apiece.

Lee Marks, of Lee Marks Fine Art from Shelbyville, Ind., was having no problems with her Obama image, one of the most talked-about pictures of the fair. Recently featured in the New Yorker, the work, Barack and Michelle Obama, Chicago, Illinois, 26 May 1998 is from a book project about American couples that photographer Mariana Cook did in the 1990s, but wasn't included in the finished product. Marks had gelatin-silver prints available in three sizes starting at prices ranging from $3,200 to $12,000. Nine had sold as of this writing.

The youngest gallery at the fair was the two-year-old Higher Pictures, located on New York’s Upper East Side, which was having success with works by Jaimie Warren. The young Kansas City photographer has passers-by capture her in humorous candid-looking shots that were selling quickly at $150 a pop in editions of 15. Interestingly, though, gallerist Kim Bourus was most actively promoting vintage work: gritty street scenes captured by the underknown, self-taught photographer Jill Freedman in the 1960s and ’70s. The most powerful of these was Pieta, NYC (1978), which captures in black-and-white a young man holding his unconscious brother-in-law after nearly killing him with a piece of pipe in a fight. It was installed on the outside of the booth and priced at $8,000.

Fair fixture Lisa Sette of Scottsdale, Ariz., had what can only be described as the coolest work at the fair (so cool the dealer just had one mounted in her own house): installations by Arizona artist Alan Bur Johnson made up of dozens of small circular, metal-rimmed tags filled with photographic transparencies of MRIs and insect wings, then tacked to the wall in different compositions. Aereus (2009), a unique work priced at $3,800, takes the rough shape of the Milky Way. Also on view was a selection of Vietnamese-born Binh Dahn’s innovative “chlorophyll prints,” which are made by laying a large negative on a bed of leaves or other organic material in the sun for as long as is necessary to transfer the image, usually of a Buddha or other Eastern icon, onto the leaves.

First-time exhibitor Miller Block of Boston was also displaying compelling, innovative work, including several images by New York–based Lori Nix, who creates and shoots elaborate models of interiors so realistic you can’t tell they’re models. The standout of these was the duskily lit, 40-by-50-inch Laundromat (2008), which presents sagging ceiling tile, a dirty checkerboard tile floor, and miniature washing machines with spice jar lids for doors, on offer for $5,000. The gallery hadn’t sold anything yet, but owner Ellen Miller wasn’t sure if that was because her artists — all process-oriented — are somewhat outside of the norm or because of the economy. Still, she was happy to have the new audience, especially after sitting out this year’s “undersold” Works on Paper fair. “I don’t think you can count on good sales at a fair,” she said. “So you need to at least make sure the exposure’s good.”