From July 4 to September 25, Arlès returns to be the capital of photography with the traditional appointment of Les Rencontres. The 2022 program, broadcasted on live streaming on March 23 on the event's platforms, includes 40 very varied exhibitions, to which are added those offered in the Grand Arles Express, showcasing works by unknown or forgotten artists and works by emergent talents.
Annual photography festival the Rencontres d’Arles was founded in 1970 by Arlesian photographer Lucien Clergue, writer Michel Tournier, and historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette. At the time, photography was still regarded as a “minor” art and had not come of age. The festival in Arles played an important role in enabling it to gain recognition from institutions. Starting as a series of encounters between photography enthusiasts, over the years the event gained importance and much popularity, with soaring success in the early 2000s due to a growing public interest in photography.
The presentation in the Atelier de la Mécanique of the Verbund collection, unreleased in France, shows "Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s", dedicated to women artists for whom photography has been one of the major means of expressing their emancipation. The exhibition encompasses almost 600 artworks by 82 artists, from Cindy Sherman to Orlan, from Helena Almeida to Martha Wilson. They make a theme of their bodies, question the diktat of beauty, and deal with the construct of female identities. Since 2010, the exhibition of the same name has toured 15 cities in Europe and has been on display in venues including the Centre de Cultura Contemporánia in Barcelona, the Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and in the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna.
The Sainte-Anne church hosts a series of works by the French-American artist and filmmaker Babette Mangolte focusing on dance, performance art, and theatre in New York City during the 1970s. Among the protagonists of her works, there are Trisha Brown, Richard Foreman, Lucinda Childs, Robert Wilson, and Simon Forti.
Susan Meiselas and Marta Gentilucci collaborated to set up an installation at Saint-Blaise church entitled "Cartographie du corps", tracing a map of the skin and gestures of older women, which evoke engaged lives, still full of energy and beauty, a beauty that comes from the overlapping of their experiences.
At the Henri-Comte room, visitors can discover the first monographic exhibition of the Franco-American photographer Bettina Grossman under the direction of the artist Yto Barrada, in collaboration with Kering. Bettina Grossman, "Bettina" to the art world - has left her mark in the history of photography, even though her work remains relatively unknown to the general public. A mythical artist of New York in the 1960s and 1970s who lived in seclusion in the Chelsea Hotel from 1972 onward, Bettina developed a prolific body of work spanning more than 60 years.
Located in the Parc des Ateliers, Luma Tour, projected by Frank Gehry, will present the James Barnor retrospective "The Portfolio" (1947-1987) featuring one unique selection of images created by the Ghanaian photographer that continues to inspire a new generation of artists.
The Église des Frères Prêcheurs will be the location hosting the ten projects shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award. The project is proposed by ten structures and they will be accompanied by the guest curator Taous R. Dahmani. During opening week, a jury will bestow the Louis Roederer Discovery Award on an artist and his or her structure, entailing an acquisition worth €15,000. The public will vote for the Public’s Choice Award, entailing an acquisition worth €5,000.
The artists shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2022 are:
Roy Debmalya Choudhuri (India)
presented by Space Studio (Vadodara, India)
Rahim Fortune (United States)
presented by Sasha Wolf Projects (New York, United States)
Olga Grotova (Russia)
presented by Pushkin House (London, Great Britain)
Daniel Jack Lyons (United States)
presented by Ensemble (Marseille, France)
Seif Kousmate (Morocco)
presented by the Musée Abderrahman Slaoui (Casablanca, Morocco)
Celeste Leeuwenburg (Argentina/France)
presented by Julio Artist-Run Space (Paris, France)
Rodrigo Masina Pinheiro & Gal Marinelli Cipreste (Brazil)
presented by Ateliê Oriente (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Akeem Smith (United States/Jamaica)
presented by Heidi (Berlin, Germany)
Mika Sperling (Russia/Germany)
presented by Ahoi (Luzern, Switzerland)
Maya Inès Touam (France/Algeria)
presented by Fondation H (Paris, France, and Antananarivo, Madagascar) with the Fondation Blachère (Apt, France)
Every summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city's exceptional heritage sites, the Rencontres d'Arles has been a major influence in dissiminating the best of world photography and playing the role of a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents. In 2019, the festival welcomed more than 145 000 visitors.
For its forth edition, the Louis Vuitton City Guide makes a stop in Arles with a collector’s edition in honor of the Camargue city and its world-renowned festival. Illustrated with unpublished photographs and distributed in bookstores and selected Louis Vuitton stores in France, the mobile version of this guide will be also available through the app store and downloadable for free during the festival.
Image: Seif Kousmate. A Landscape of Akka Oasis, Akka, Morocco, February 2021, from the series Waha (Oasis). Courtesy Seif Kousmate.
