NAnd we wrote first to exhort you to go, but now we have to say what we have seen and if the good intentions have been maintained. If we look at the numbers, the glass is half full. 23,000 presences in the first professional week in which artists and curators meet in the Provencal village. 47 exhibitions to visit until 5 October.
Because Arles always applies the journey. The place is magnificent and the festival happens just as the summer explodes and the air of photography inaccurate those who love it and infect those who ignore it. Like any edition, this too has chiaroscuro that is worth investigating.
The projections
During the professional week at the Roman theater in Arles, projections and prizes take place (with the relative images on the big screen of the candidates).
It starts with the Prize Women in Motion Photography Award of Keringthis year assigned deservedly to Nan Goldin; The Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award; The Book Awardwith various sub -categories; the prize for the discovery of talent (Discovery Award Louis Roederer Foundation; The Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents and the Prix Pictet. Certainly someone is missing.
By now without prizes you do not take photography. Sad to see it, but they are one of the few sources of financing of photographic research and the possible consequent visibility.
Except for the many candidates for the many prizes, this year the projections have been tragic. Boring, verbose, full of words to give meaning and substance, but photography lives very well without being enriched, explained or worse still killed in the clumsy attempt to raise it through the word, worse still if lyrical. It becomes easily accessory and illustrative.com, however weakened.
The official language
In Arles there is only French speak so either you know it or worse for you. Two or three hours without translation of verbal performances on images.
Among the projections to be forgotten that dedicated to the anniversary of Myop That for his twenty years he puts on the screen of the good photojournalism filled with words, without any visual narrative and without attribution of the author. A miscellaneous without head and tail, imbued with unhappiness of the world who, if twenty years ago we looked at them with curiosity in the newspapers and festivals, today we shake them incessantly on our cell phones.
The same applies, with subtle differences for the dialogue between the images of Alain Willaume and the texts of the Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad. Certainly an intense and profound moment, not very suitable for the collective rite of the festival, more suited to the space and times of the theater.
Nan Goldin, the last rebel
Fortunately, there is Nan Goldin, who rebelliously is really and with the flair of the intelligence that distinguishes it must have guessed the lethargic trend so much that, as soon as he climbed on the stage, he put on the wall the director of the Rencontres, Christoph Wiesner, who in the guise of an interviewer could not formulate questions worthy and to give the exciting rhythm that the character deserved. Nan does it. It speaks, clear and precise and then, the only moment of topicality in this edition of the Festival, shakes the clumsy program with a projection of images of Gaza.
Obviously we thank you and wait for you with open arms at theHangar Bicocca of Milan With a great retrospective from 9 October.
His presence saved the very concept of evenings at the ancient theater, never so inadequate and boring.
David Armstrong David, Boston, mid -1970s. Courtesy of the summer of David Armstrong.
Wonders
We forget the evenings at the theater and think of the 47 exhibitions of the Rencontres, plus the many dozens of the Off circuit that can be visited until 5 October next.
Some indisputable wonders: David Armstrongthe melancholy of a lost generation that changed the costume and culture, broken banks and spit on the conventions. On display in contact with contact, interior portraits with colors of the 80s and then the real and authentic body of the exhibition, the beautiful rebels portrayed by this master of the autobiography, friend of Nan Goldin, who died in 2014.
Always in the snail spaces, there is Yves Saint Laurent And his world, an exhibition designed and made with care and sense that is worth all the time he devotes himself.
Irving Penn Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 1957. Courtesy of the Irving Penn Foundation / Foundation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.
And, always here, in the old parc des ateliers now renewed and enjoyable, there is the exhibition Construction deconstraction reConstructionBrazilian modernist photography through the production of Photo Cine Clube Banderante (FCCB), an amateur photography club of San Paolo.
We would have passed beyond if it hadn’t been so beautiful as to draw attention. Curated and explained properly, it accompanies us to discover the Brazilian architecture, the evolution cities in the wisdom of photographers. A discovery.
AFONSO PORTO / RETRAINA DO MORRO ZOI’s Son, Serra Community, Belo Horizonte, MG, 1989. Courtesy of the artist.
Brazil is, with Australia, the country on which this edition focuses on. If the exhibition Ancestral Futures It presents a new generation of artists who work with photography, video and collage, has not convinced us too much, chaotic and redundant, vice versa Retrathroes do Morro He enchanted us. A beautiful exhibition, the result of a reconnaissance on the archive of 250,000 images, pays homage to two photographers João Mendes and AFONSO PIGE who for 60 years have documented the life and memories of the residents of the Serra community, one of the largest favelas in Brazil in Belo Horizonte.
Claudia Andujar from the a sants series, São Paulo, SP, about 1971. Courtesy of the artist / Instituto Moreira Salles.
In the Arlesian patrol of Brazil, the exhibition of Claudia Andujarthe great artist, now Brazilian, known for the long work on the Yanomami of the Amazon, now on display with then the place of the othera journey to his archive that shows the eclectic path and the experiments of an indomitable woman, from street photography to collaboration with the mythical Realidade magazine, passing through artistic experiments.
We who are feminists up to the marrow, we loved Double, Of Carmen Winant – who never misses a blow – and Carol Newhousefounder of Womanshare, a feminist lesbian community of the 70s in the United States. The photographic dialogue between the two women, expressions of two generations and deeply different languages, is moving. I hit males and conservatives, so it’s okay.
The retrospective dedicated to Louis Stettnerimmense and not very celebrated street photographer. Geometric passion, purity of gaze, love of the instant.
Unfortunately the exhibition of Todd hido, Amato and revered contemporary master who in this exhibition loses his magic instead of surprising.
In a suggestive and slightly disturbing space, Cryptoportiques, there is a specially designed installation of Batia Setteremotional architectures, dissonant and extremely suggestive.
Diana Markosian. Mornings with You, Father Series, 2014-2024. Courtesy of the artist.
All the experience of this edition cannot be reviewed, but concluding it is worth reporting the wonderful work of Diana Markosian on the search for her father. An intimate and powerful reflection on ties, pain and loss and ability of images to speak without the word, static or moving are powerful and moving. The writer cried.
In the often space of the Markosian, at the Iaple Monoprix, the exhibition of Discovery Award Louis Roedereroffers an interesting high -level panorama. All finalists have deep themes and truly extraordinary images.
We close in beauty
Marion and Philippe Jacquier They love anonymous photography. For more than 20 years they have looked for vernacular images to build their collection which today has almost 10,000 silver prints to cover more than a century of photography. From this collection of family, historical, scientific, erotic and photojournalistic images, the selection on display organized around themes such as history, intimacy and obsession was born. This cannot be described or telling. You have to see it and spend all the time it takes. He deserved a better location. Masterpiece.
If you have not yet made programs, Provence is magnificent and Arles Val the Rencontres well.
Arles 2025
Disobedient images
Until 5 October next
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