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Arles – Les Rencontres de la Photographie 2025
July 7 @ 11:00 - October 5 @ 17:00
The Rencontres d’Arles is a summer photography festival founded in 1970, which has learned a world-wide reputation as a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents. The exhibitions are given on various heritage sites, suitably stage-designed for the purpose.
Arles 2025 – Disobedient images
Commitment pervades the entire program of this 56th edition. From Australia to Brazil, through North America and the Caribbean, while the world is shaken by rising nationalism, nihilism and environmental crises, the photographic perspectives presented offer a crucial counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, celebrating the diversity of cultures, genders and origins.
“Our identities (…) aren’t rooted in a single territory. They extend, crossbreed, shift and constantly recreate themselves”.
In the spirit of the thought of Édouard Glissant, who extols the intertwining of cultures and the richness of encounters, this new edition of the festival proposes the exploration of the image in polyphonic form. Here, photography is not limited to an exoticizing gaze: it inscribes the elsewhere in a dynamic of exchange and ‘cultural translation’, extending the reflection of the anthropologist Alban Bensa. Photography is thus envisioned as an instrument of resistance, testimony, and social transformation in the face of contemporary crises.
Commitment pervades the entire program of this 56th edition. From Australia to Brazil, through North America and the Caribbean, while the world is shaken by rising nationalism, nihilism and environmental crises, the photographic perspectives presented offer a crucial counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, celebrating the diversity of cultures, genders and origins.
Through a dialogue between contemporary and emerging art, vernacular photography and modernism, the exhibitions presented as part of the Brazil-France 2025 Season celebrate the artistic vigor of the Latin American country. Ancestral Futures proffers a reflection on memory and identity: through a reinterpretation of visual archives, the artists question the colonial legacy and the struggles of the Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and LGBTQIA+ communities. Through a critical lens, they redefine representations, opening new perspectives on history and the future, while the debates on the restitution of patrimony and the rewriting of founding narratives intensify. In Retratistas do Morro, the daily life of the Serra community in Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s largest and oldest favela, is revealed through a collection of 250,000 negatives by photographers João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta. This dynamic is further explored in the exhibition dedicated to Claudia Andujar, whose activism is rooted in the struggles of the 1960s and 70s, before she devoted her work to the indigenous Yanomami people. Fort its part, the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), founded in São Paulo in 1939 illustrates a pivotal period in Brazilian modernist photography, influenced by Neo-Concrete Art, Cinema Novo and Bossa Nova.
Another continent discloses a fascinating panorama of its photographic creation, from works by indigenous artists to its contemporary art scene. On Country: Photography from Australia explores the deep and spiritual relationship that Aboriginal people have with their land, which extends far beyond the merely geographical. In transcending colonial history and modernity, this bond is expressed through works in which photography becomes a tool of transmission and resilience in the face of climatic and political disturbances that threaten this cultural legacy.
The question of territories and their transformations extends to other geographical areas. U.S. Route 1 revisits Berenice Abbott’s unfinished project: Anna Fox and Karen Knorr explore the mythical road between Maine and Florida, exposing the economic fractures, migration crises and identity tensions exacerbated by recent political turmoil.
With Raphaëlle Peria, winner of the BMW Art Makers program, the crossing of an expanse of territory is evoked through childhood memories, leading us to the banks of the Canal du Midi.
The exhibition dedicated to the foundational work of Louis Stettner links the American and European continents, exploring his role as a bridge between American Street Photography and French Humanist vision. Through 150 images and previously unpublished documents, his social and political commitment and the diversity of his artistic experiments are revealed from a fresh perspective. His images convey a deep sensitivity to social realities, an approach similarly found in the work of Letizia Battaglia. The Italian artist has captured the violence of the Sicilian Mafia with unrivalled intensity, while magnifying the beauty and vitality of Palermo. Her work resonates in the face of growing threats to investigative journalism and press freedom, a delicate issue also tackled by Carine Krecké, winner of the Luxembourg Photography Award, who questions how we comprehend information and remember conflicts.
Among the outstanding participants of this edition, Nan Goldin, winner of the 2025 Kering Women in Motion Award and emblematic figure of the festival, returns with a new proposal that reflects her unique, uncompromising visual style, focusing specifically on the bonds of family and friendship. What connects individuals hinges on complex relationships. Diana Markosian, Keisha Scarville, Camille Lévêque and Erica Lennard explore these diverse ties, forged by social, cultural and political dynamics. The works of Carmen Winant, Carol Newhouse and Lila Neutre redraw the contours of the notion of kinship. By integrating identitary and emotional legacies, they challenge the boundaries between biological and elected family.
Agnès Geoffray’s work on the reformatories for underage girls in France questions our relationship to history in a memorial register marked by acts of rebellion and emancipatory aspirations. Through photographic and textual re-compositions, she gives voice and presence to those who were labeled ‘uneducable’. In querying the social norms of her time, she brings to light ignored layers of the past.
In the wake of these forgotten narratives, the richness of anonymous images is made manifest through the Marion and Philippe Jacquier Collection. Comprising nearly 10,000 anonymous and amateur prints, it offers a vast corpus of visual stories that combine the intimate, the documentary, and the peculiar. This exploration of vernacular photography reveals fragments of past lives and snapshots of the everyday.
The exhibition Yves Saint Laurent and Photography, formed in collaboration with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and based on its collections, embodies the intertwining of photography and other disciplines. It offers an immersion into the world of the couturier, exploring his relationship with the photographers of his time, and his inner inspirations. Between rigor and graphic daring, his fashion finds a new dimension in photography, oscillating between thought and feeling.
Finally, the Festival upholds its commitment to showcasing emerging talent. The Louis Roederer Foundation 2025 Discovery Award exhibition, curated by César González-Aguirre, continues its exploration of contemporary issues in photography and returns to the Espace Monoprix venue.
Together with Aurélie de Lanlay and the entire Festival team, we look forward to welcoming you in Arles from 7 July to discover a vigorous and committed edition. More than ever, the image asserts itself as a space for awareness and reinvention.
7 juli – 5 october 2025