Last week, B&H hosted its second Bild Expo at the Javits Center in New York City. After years of attending the Photo Plus expo and seeing its rapid decline, I had questions about the viability of a show in New York City. Whatever expectations I might have had, they were absolutely shattered by what I saw there.
Bild wasn’t meant to be more than a one-time thing. The first Bild in 2023 was meant to celebrate B&H Photo’s 50th anniversary and its “commitment to supporting visual and audio artistry.” But it went so well and the response was so positive that B&H decided to do it again.
While I’m not sure if the intention is to do this show annually or even every two years (and B&H probably isn’t sure about that yet either), the number of attendees this year shows that there certainly is demand for a show like this in New York and while COVID certainly played a role, Emerald Expo — the company behind Photo Plus and the attempted Create NYC follow-up that failed — somehow fumbled an enormous bag by leaving a vacuum for Bild to fill.
Astounding Attendance
I had attended three major expos in 2025 before arriving at Bild (NAB in Las Vegas, CP+ in Tokyo, and CineGear in Los Angeles), so I thought I had a good grasp of what to expect. I was wrong. As I walked up to the front door of the Javits Center’s northernmost hall, I was greeted by an enormous line to get in.
“That’s odd,” I thought to myself. There weren’t ever more than a dozen people in front of me trying to get into any of these other shows I’d been to.
When I got into the building, my awe only magnified. That line wasn’t the front of the crowd, it was somewhere near the middle. The show floor was already teeming with visitors and the registration area was packed to the gills with attendees picking up their badges, and the show had only been open for a few minutes. As the day progressed, I became even more shocked at how many people showed up.
While B&H has not released official attendance numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw north of 50,000 people attend the two-day expo. Given that the show took place on a Tuesday and Wednesday at the start of Summer, that number should sound even more impressive; people had to take off from work to come to this thing.
And come they did. Not only were brands and manufacturers overwhelmed on the expo floor, the next floor up was reserved for speakers and was divided into multiple rooms, each operating simultaneously for two straight days. Every single speaker was greeted by lines out the door and standing room only.
Folks even turned up to see Chris Niccolls, Jordan Drake, and me host a live PetaPixel Podcast, where for 40 minutes we chatted about the state of the gear industry — and not a single chair was available.
There were even product launches at this show, which a US-based expo hasn’t seen for years. Bild really had everything, and the response to it was overwhelmingly positive.
In the photos here, I need to make something abundantly clear: these weren’t designed to make it appear as though there are a lot of people in the shot. There is no clever framing or underhanded lens work; this is what it was actually like to be there. This show was popping and did so for two solid days.
New York Needed This
After seeing the lack of enthusiasm at NAB earlier this year, this turnout totally shocked me. In March, I wrote about how the CP+ show in Japan had effectively replaced the now-defunct Photokina as far as industry significance is concerned and while I still stand by that, if B&H continues the Bild Expo into an annual event, we’ll have a duo of exceptionally healthy trade shows in two of the globe’s biggest city centers drawing significant crowds. That’s a good thing for the photo industry which, until recently, felt like it was in substantial decline. Looking at the success of Bild and CP+ this year, there is no way that’s true now.
The United States has for a long time been a hugely important region for camera manufacturers. There are a lot of artists and professionals here and it tends to be the biggest single country for sales. That’s why it felt so strange to see expos and trade shows seemingly dwindle in popularity to the point that they basically lost wider industry relevance. What B&H showed is that it’s not expos that aren’t popular, it’s how they’re run or what they offer that wasn’t resonating with photographers.
Clearly, when they’re done right, they can be wildly successful.
Image credits: Photos by Dana Glidden
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