Summer Festivals in France

Les Rencontres d'Arles 2009 - Photography as fine art

by Rosslyn Hyams

Article published on the 2009-07-10 Latest update 2009-08-23 14:48 TU

(Copyright : Michel Bouvet)

The famous and those less so in the photography world rub shoulders in the modest but pretty town of Arles in the south of France.The photography bonanza, Les Rencontres d'Arles, is still going strong after 40 years. It attracted the 19th Century painter Van Gogh, so why not other artists with an aesthetic and meaningful quest?

This year, François Hebel, director of the Rencontres d'Arles, decide to mark the 40th anniversary by creating two sections. Rencontres with the regulars opened with a special tribute to photographer Willy Ronis, aged 98. Ruptures, or disruptions, is centred on the work of those who have followed his generation and broken the boundaries laid down by the photography standards of their time.

Hebel, former director of the photo agency Magnum, invited Nan Goldin as the special guest in the ruptures section. The 55 year-old US photographer is probably most famous for her photos of the wrung-out side of partying lifestyle as she depicted social life in 1980s.

Nan and Brian in the bed, New York City, 1983.
(Photo: Nan Goldin)

Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was shown again at Arles as it was in 1987 the first time round-- as 45 minutes of photos turned into film. The drugs, alchohol and love scenes are perhaps less arresting by their content today than they were in this piece that broke ground, but the photographic work remains just as sharp.

She's invited 12 of her friends to join in this special anniversary year, David Armstrong, Marina Berio, Jean-Christian Bourcart, Antoine D'Agata, JH Engström, Jim Goldberg, Christine Fenzl, Leigh Ledare, Boris Mikhailov, Anders Petersen, Jack Pierson, Lisa Ross and Annelies Strba.

If you're lucky you may also run into one of France's icons of photography who has shown another angle of so many ordinary street scenes. That's Willy Ronis. Eighty of his photographs, some well-known, others less so are currently on exhibit here.

Place Vendome, 1947
(Photo: Willy Ronis/Rapho)

His work is a testament to a man who says he never went out without a camera, and who stuck to the streets of Paris, where people lived and worked and loved. Ronis received his first camera when he was 16 years old. He only put it down at the age of 91.

Willy Ronis, joined Rapho agency in 1950, worked for a host of magazines and in 2001, when he decided to stop clicking the shutter, he donated his works to the French state.

Dozens of photographers take part in the Rencontres d'Arles each year, whether in the competition, which notably assists relatively unknown artists, or in retrospective, like Goldin and Ronis. Each have their camera-eye view, traveling from places as far apart as China and Ireland, the US and Slovakia, Palestine and France, and Japan and Italy.

If you want to take a closer or different look at the world and people around you, the Rencontres d'Arles is as good as one-stop-shopping.