At this year’s Rencontres d’Arles Photographie 2007, the plat du jour was surprise. And over five days it delivered quite a few. Where else could you bump into Magnum photographer David Hurn checking his map to find the book-signing area only to have fellow agency legend Elliot Erwitt appear from around the corner, dressed in red braces and sporting an oversized pair of black diamond-studded sunglasses? Or see Spanish photographer Alberto Garcia-Alix’s oeuvre of 400 photographs documenting the underbelly of his personal life in a warts-and-all projection in an ampitheatre accompanied by Daniel Melingo’s guitar? So what better way to enjoy Arles than having the official timetable of talks, exhibition tours and book signings as a skeleton schedule fleshed out with chance and random encounters.
Festival director Francois Hebel has overseen the event for the last six consecutive years, as well as for two years in the late 1980s when his remit was “to bring in the photography of (his) generation”. He ran a photo gallery at FNAC, worked at the Magnum agency for 12 years and took on the role as Vice President, Europe, for Corbis. But for Hebel, this is “the job I love the most” and he aims “to be surprised, to see where photography is going next and to bring the same surprise I get to the public.” In contrast to last year’s francophile festival curated by French photojournalist Raymond Depardon, Rencontres has also cast its net wider in search of cultural diversity.
Three shows from the Indian continent covered the late 1800s to the present. While Umrao Singh Sher-Gil’s black and white self-portraits and photos of his wife and daughters were taken at the turn of the century, India showcased nine contemporary Indian photographers with highlights including the intergenerational black and white images of mother and daughter Nony and Dayinita Singh, Anay Mann’s staged colour series of his family and Siya Singh’s androgynous self-portraits. Completing the triad was a retrospective of Indian photographer Raghu Rai’s work, including his recent colourful panoramas showing daily life in the country, and his exhibition talk reached full capacity quickly. In his populated images, the subjects appear to be almost bursting out of the frame which Raghu described as “lots of little pictures in one image” in contrast to his earlier black and white work.
The China exhibition focused on the Dashanzi Art District Beijing and combined media to approach conceptual photography embracing performance, sculpture, painting and video. Not to everyone’s liking, the work nevertheless provided an interesting counterpoint to the Indian work and gave the East a place on the art map of the West. The Gao Brothers’ Sense of Space, photographs of a performance piece, in which naked men are framed within a group of bookshelves, translated particularly well.
Closer to home, the Loving Your Pictures exhibition comprising nine series of found photographs curated by the creative director of KesselsKramer, Erik Kessels, was one such surprise. Drawn from his archive, the images found a home in the wonderful Frres Prcheurs Church. Questions of authenticity, authorship and the private becoming public were raised in this delightful exhibition and the accompanying texts and sounds provided just enough context to satisfy curiosity but not so much as to pre-empt readings. First exhibited at the museum in Utrecht, Kessels commented that in the church setting “it surprised me as it works together a little bit more.” Set within the vaulted ceilings, the show was both playful and poignant. Perspex cubes of images were stacked on top of each other, larger than life cut-outs of German police officer uniforms from the 70s stood to attention, and a curtained-off area where four screens projected photographs taken in Europe by a taxi driver of a woman in a Mercedes created a must-see exhibition. Later, Kessels revealed that the woman was disabled and couldn’t leave the car.
During July’s professional week, portfolio reviews are a big draw. Official reviews cost ?250 for ten 20-minute slots with reviewers drawn from galleries, editors, curators, agencies and publishers, however for those on a limited budget, there were free review sessions but places filled up fast. Voies Off, now in its twelth year, offered free reviews and nightly screenings. Around 850 portfolios from 41 countries were submitted this year and a selection of prizes awarded. In 1996, the then-unknown former Magnum associate, Antoine D’Agata, showed his work and won the overall prize. Artistic director, photographer and teacher, Christophe Laloi regards the off-site event as “very convivial” and as there is no admission cost it attracts a wider audience. “Photographers need to be loved by a very diverse public and they need to be known by professionals,” he said. “I try to bring these different things together.”
The Caf Photo was organised by Dominique Charlet of Charlet Photographies and Pierre-Yves Mah, founder of Paris Photographic Institute, spos, as a way of getting back “to the roots of the idea of a rencontre (an encounter) and offering a formal but open setting to help new talent emerge.” The winner of one day’s portfolio reviews, which landed her a Leica Digilux camera, was French photographer Ratiba Hamane with a series of striking impressionist colour photographs of urban areas. For La Nuit de l’anne the streets of the La Roquette district heaved as galleries opened all night with projections showing amongst the countless historic buildings.
Prizes including the Leica European Publishers Award for Photography went to Italian photojournalist Paolo Pellegrin’s As I was Dying, the Leica Oskar Barnack Prize was awarded to Brazilian photographer Julio Bittencourt, and the Photo Service Publishing Award was won by Norwegian photographer Margaret de Lange for her black and white series Daughters. The Discovery Awards, for which five curators select three artists to exhibit their work in one of the ateliers, allowed professionals to vote. For this prize, French photographer Laura Henno received the ?25,000 award for her staged colour images of teenagers. Some criticized the awarding of such a big prize to one winner rather than dividing it, while others asked why the Contemporary and Historical Book Awards of ?8000 each for Ruben Lundgren and Thijs Groot Wassink’s Empty Bottles (Veenman) and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Color in Transparency (Steidl), respectively, were split between photographer and publisher.
More than 2000 professionals attended the opening week and 4100 exhibition tickets were sold over five days. Veteran singer Lou Reed had planned to collaborate with Julian Schnabel on an audio-visual version of his Berlin album for the 38th festival, but the visuals were swept away by the mistral and only the songs remained. Rencontres d’Arles runs until 16 September and with 50 shows, including Magnum Photos 60th anniversary exhibition, guided tours and workshops, to fully appreciate the festival’s surprises be sure to book a longer stay. And yes, I bought the T-shirt.
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