The Arles photography festival promotes the sharing of a common passion, photography, with its ability to convey stories and ensure their lasting preservation.
The encounter between photography and storytelling fosters an emancipatory movement based on the circulation of ideas through a wide variety of images. A tool for sharing, photography gives rise to new voices ready to shape our perspective through visual narratives. The 57th edition of the Arles Photography Festival spans three months, from July 6 to October 4. This creative hub is structured around several themes. The exhibitions connect various collective projects sensitive to the ephemeral nature of contact with photography, linked to the constant need to connect with reality. It is a tribute to photography and its capacity to traverse and bear witness to each way of celebrating our interpretations and engagement. The six themes explored are: "Independences," "Crossings," "Sensitive Lives," "Rereadings," "Uncertain Archives," and finally, "Emergences."
Independences
Ghana! Dreaming of independence 1957-1976:
The exhibition displays a series of historical and contemporary works by photographers grappling with the issue of independence in Ghana. Ghana's independence on March 6, 1957, spurred political and social reconfiguration. However, marked by a fragile political landscape following decolonization from British rule, the country hoped to forge a sense of collective unity. Among the photographers, Paul Strand reconstructed Ghanaian identity from a pre-existing but buried culture. Carlos Idun Tawiah also contributed to this national hope, staging scenes of Sunday dinners and family moments. The significance of editorial action surrounding independence in Ghana allowed for the portrayal of a new, and particularly younger, nation in search of cultural fulfillment, exploring themes of love, nostalgia, and hope.
crossings
Orianne Ciantar Olive: The Circular Ruins
In 2019, Orianne Ciantar traveled to Syria, following the old Beirut-Damascus railway line. At the narrow border between Syria and Lebanon, Ciantar decided to reverse everything in order to evoke a historical upheaval, a fissure that widens without any possibility of return. She employs principles of inversion in her creative process, from inverted film and solarization to the inversion of names and false identities. The series inscribes a new narrative from reality to question the responsibility of photographic archives regarding what they witness and what they prove. The image has the power to shift the gaze while avoiding any form of conflict. This photographic experiment investigates the veracity of archival photographs.
Orianne Ciantar Olive, The Prostrates II, 2021 With the kind permission of the artist
A look at the FNAC photographic collection through a story by Nathacha Appanah: Our Distant Dreams
Our Distant Dreams is a collection of stories compiled by Natacha Appanah. The word "traversed" evokes the vocabulary of travel. By exploring the FNAC's photographic corpus, whose collection spans nearly 1800 prints, we discover a perspective on transgression and a devotion to travel. Photography moves, and that is precisely why it remains essential. The desire to find oneself is fulfilled by searching elsewhere, in archives and remote lands.
Sensitive Lives
Flower Power
The flower, a recurring symbol in art, evokes hope and regeneration. Far from being a simple entity, it transforms, shedding its petals or leaves, and is capable of assuming any appearance. Five photographers explored the symbolic meaning of the flower according to its representation and its place in society throughout its life cycle. Our indifference towards flowers prevents us from imagining the consequences of our activities on these living beings.
Proofreadings
Harry Gruyaert: A Sense of Place
Harry Gruyaert travels the world with intensity, and whether he goes to New York, Moscow, Mumbai, or Zanzibar, he always seems to find inspiration. Each photograph highlights a meticulous urban geometry and a composition akin to choreography. He transforms his surroundings into a musical note built on a rhythm capable of conveying the dynamism present in urban populations. Social rituals attract his attention because they are devoid of contempt and hierarchy. The vibrant colors emanating from his lens attest to a mechanism of socialization focused on national identity and, ultimately, individual identity.
Uncertain archives
Lee Schulman and Omar Victor Diop: The anonymous project being there
The Anonymous project, Being There , is a raw, open family album retracing the good times, those created through presence and the sharing of intimate moments. But should we remember that photography is a tool full of contradictions? Acting as a vehicle for truth, this medium recomposes reality and then crystallizes a moment of truth. Yet, it is precisely because it reframes this reality that the question of its authenticity remains to be dismantled. The illusion of continuous happiness is achieved when otherness is placed outside the frame. Archival photographs taken in North America in the 1950s and 1960s allowed for the construction of this series, marked by a Black presence consciously integrated into a predominantly white landscape. From staged representations, the innocence of silence validates these images, which nevertheless emit a bilateral discomfort. Omar Victor Diop is deliberately excluded as a symbol of resistance and injustice. Through ordinary scenarios, a normalization of the feeling of exclusion fuels the question of racism and the attachment to it.
Emergences
Camille Renée Devin: Discovering my colors
Discovering My Colors is a manifesto in the quest for identity, a tribute to those seeking their place between their origins and the familiar routines of their lives. Belonging to a community requires more than simply adopting habits and following trends. Indeed, our sense of self arises from the intersection of what anchors us in the present with what we aspire to become. Camille Renée Devin creates a bridge between her ancestors and her own way of inhabiting the world. Photography, her preferred medium, explores forms of identity representation through abstract analogies to genetics. The photographic series is a project of unity intended to reconcile uncertainties about our identity with our intuitions regarding what allows us to be recognized.
Camille-Renée Devid, The Dance of Ancient Souls, 2020-2024 With the kind permission of the artist.
The Arles Photography Festival combines reflection and contemplation within a rich and varied photographic landscape of stories. The shared narratives follow a precise cartography that is as moving as it is experimental. Archival pieces become more than archaeological artifacts; they are connected to contemporary reflections, becoming the stage for new visual pronouncements. A focus on identity and physical or moral presence subtly shapes the point of convergence between all these photographic series.
https://www.rencontres-arles.com/fr
Photography Meetings
34 rue du docteur Fanton, Arles
From July 6 to October 4
