A Collectors' Exhibition will give the audience a chance to view four prominent Chinese collections that will be made public together for the first time.
The featured collectors include Adrian Cheng, the founder of K11 Art Foundation; Zhou Dawei, the founder of Shanghai's Cc Foundation; Wang Jinyuan, chairwoman of Shanghai's Fosun Foundation; and Shao Zhong, chairman of Modern Media Group.
The exhibition's curator Erin Barnett says it will be a unique opportunity to see photographic and video works of some of the most compelling artists from China, Japan and Europe.
An international lineup of 50 galleries and institutions from 16 countries will also participate in this year's fair.
Photofairs Shanghai was launched by the World Photography Organization to address a boosting market in collectable, fine-art photography.
Last year it attracted more than 27,000 visitors and posted strong sales. Works priced between $5,000 and $15,000 on average were sold in 2016.
Han says there has been a change in the trend of works sold at the fair.
She says the inaugural edition four years ago saw fashion photography in demand, while gradually, more conceptual and abstract works have been bought, "which is our main direction of creating an art fair dedicated to contemporary photography".
The fair also shows how artists have been expanding the boundary of photography by incorporating other mediums and digital technology.
A Staged section at the upcoming fair will investigate the evolution of photography when being blended with other art forms such as performance arts and videos.
The artists working with both film and photography include Chen Qiulin from China and Pixy Liao, a Shanghai-born artist who now resides in Brooklyn.
Han says internet-based art is also becoming more popular and the fair will present a new work by 33-year-old Chinese artist Lu Yang that was commissioned by Daata Editions, an online platform for purchasing sound, video and web-based artworks.
She says Lu has produced "groundbreaking" multimedia work related to themes such as neuroscience, mortality and religion, and the final work will be available for downloading on Daata Editions' website.
Han says the launch of new sections at the fair serves to bring collectors' freshness to it and adds to the fair's artistic depth.
"These are all curated exhibitions that will bring museum-quality exhibitions and content ranging from masterpieces to cutting-edge moving images and internet-based works. The fair's talks program will bring together experts in the field and provide strong academic support to the themes shown."
Photofairs also operates a fair in San Francisco, introducing Asian collectors and artists to one of the world's most important photography centers. The next San Francisco fair will be held over Feb 23-25, 2018.
Han says the fair has become a place for new and seasoned collectors in the United States to discover leading and emerging artists from Asia, specifically China, Japan and South Korea.
"Our collectors in Shanghai are excited to venture to San Francisco－some of them for the first time to be a part of a VIP program at the fair."
"Photofairs has become a melting pot of cultures where fine-art photography is celebrated in a truly international way."
