The 55th edition of the Rencontres d’Arles, the summer photography festival founded in 1970 dedicated to photographic and contemporary creative talents, will be held from July 01 to September 29, 2024, presenting a rich selection of thirty exhibitions.
Many works deal with contemporary themes through an original approach. Cristina De Middel with Journey to the Center inspired by Jules Verne presents the Central America migration route across Mexico as a heroic and daring journey rather than a runaway. French photographer Nicolas Floc'h introduces the Rivers Ocean series. Based on a dozen of the 224 color points of water, the exhibition offers an immersion into the American landscape, the water cycle, and the landscape of color.

The issue of war representation, amplified by the crisis of photojournalism, the digital revolution, and the proliferation of new distribution channels, lies instead at the heart of Echoes by photographer Stephen Dock. Echoes, whose title refers to the notion of a reported image, is a refusal to feed the traditional visual mythology of war that is no longer in tune with the reality of today's world. By attempting to deconstruct a photographic register, Stephen Dock proposes a characteristic image of modern war.

The Lebanese photographer Randa Mirza explores the urban imaginary of Beirut, raising questions regarding the devenir of the city of Beirut, its representations, and its identities. Beirutopia is a visual essay formed from a biographical perspective, a premonition of the multidimensional, political, financial, and social, crisis that Lebanon is experiencing. This solo show looks critically at the brutal transformation of post-war Beirut through seven works produced between 2000 and 2022.

The individuals overlooked or otherwise marginalized by society are at the centre of Mary Ellen Mark's creative vision. Guided by humanist ideals, the US documentary photographer, storyteller, and portraitist focused her gaze on people with often diverse backgrounds, leading lives quite different from her own. Encounters are five of her most in-depth projects, often realized most definitively in book form. These projects focus on institutionalized women in the Oregon State Hospital, street children in Seattle, as well as sex workers in Mumbai, the needy and dying in Mother Teresa’s charities and traveling circus families in India.

Rencontres d’Arles 2024
July 01 – September 29, 2024
Arles, France
www.rencontres-arles.com

Photo: Mary Ellen Mark. Kissing in a bar, New York City, 1977. Courtesy of The Mary Ellen Mark Foundation / Howard Greenberg Gallery.