Rencontres d’Arles

The ‘mother of all photo festivals’ is back. For twelve full week right into late summer, activities in the town of Arles will revolve around photography. The event’s artistic director, Sam Stourdzé, sees the 47th Les Rencontres de la Photographie as an “observatory of artistic practice”, and, once again, plans to present new trends and talent.

With around 40 exhibitions, the festival will present the whole range of photographic styles. With the title, Africa Pop, photographers and curators at the beginning of their careers, bring together popular and unconventional perspectives of their continent.
In Swinging Bamako, four photographers reveal Cuban musical influences in the erstwhile communist state of Mali in West Africa. In Tear My Bra, twelve artists light-heartedly explore Nollywood – Nigeria’s productive film industry – and its cultural influences.

The exhibitions of Dominic Nahr, João Pina and Laia Abril, among others, deal with more serious themes. In the first chapter of her History of Misogyny, Abril stands up for the right of women to have abortions. Pina spent nearly ten years researching Operation Condor: in a series with the same title, the Portuguese photographer presents the perpetrators, victims and bereaved involved in secret military missions in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay, where over 60,000 political prisoners have disappeared since 1975. Nahr reports on the civil war in South Sudan: in Fractured State he shows both fighters and people fleeing from the violence.

For the second time during the Rencontres Festival, the 25,000 euro Duma Rencontres Dummy Book Award will be granted to the most promising book project.

Fur further information visit: Rencontres d’Arles