The Rencontres d'Arles (formerly called Rencontres internationales de la photographie d'Arles) is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette. [1]
The Rencontres d'Arles has an international reputation for showing material that has never been seen by the public before. In 2015, the festival welcomed 93,000 visitors; in 2016, the 100,000 visitor mark was reached. [2]
Specially designed exhibitions, often organised in collaboration with French and foreign museums and institutions, take place in various historic sites. Some venues, such as 12th-century chapels or 19th-century industrial buildings, are open to the public throughout the festival. [3]
The Rencontres d'Arles has launched the careers of numerous photographers, confirming its significance as a springboard for photography and contemporary creativity. In recent years the Rencontres d'Arles has invited many guest curators and entrusted some of its programming to prominent figures in the world of art and photography, such as Martin Parr in 2004, Raymond Depardon in 2006, the Arles-born fashion designer Christian Lacroix in 2008 and Nan Goldin in 2009. [3]
The 51st edition of the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the winners of the 2020 awards were nevertheless announced. [4]
Public funding accounted for 40% of the 2015 festival's €6.3-million budget, sales (mainly of tickets and derivative products), 40% and private partnerships, 20%.[ clarification needed ][ citation needed ]
Michel Tournier was a French writer. He won awards such as the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1967 for Friday, or, The Other Island and the Prix Goncourt for The Erl-King in 1970. His inspirations included traditional German culture, Catholicism and the philosophies of Gaston Bachelard. He resided in Choisel and was a member of the Académie Goncourt. His autobiography has been translated and published as The Wind Spirit. He was on occasion in contention for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Lucien Hervé was a Hungarian photographer. He was notable for his architectural photography, beginning with his work for Le Corbusier.
Esther Levine is a German born, New York based photographer. After studying photography at the City College of New York from 1994 to 1996 she enrolled in the documentary photography program at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1996. Levine, a Leica photographer, has had exhibits in New York, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Switzerland, Guangzou and Mannheim, shot ad campaigns and had her work published in a variety of European magazines.
Lucien Clergue was a French photographer. He was Chairman of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris for 2013.
Jean-Pierre Sudre was a commercial photographer.
Jane Evelyn Atwood is an American photographer, who has been living in Paris since 1971. Working primarily with documentary photography, Atwood typically follows groups of people or individuals, focusing mostly on people who are on the fringes of society. Atwood has had ten books of her work published, and received the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Grand Prix Paris Match for Photojournalism, the Oskar Barnack Award, the Alfred Eisenstadt Award and the Hasselblad Foundation Grant twice.
Smith is a French transdisciplinary artist-researcher. Smith experiments with and explores the links between contemporary humanity and its boundary figures - ghosts, mutants, hybrids - engaging his own body and that of his collaborators - writers, astronauts, shamans, engineers, designers, performers or composers - in indisciplinary projects. Disturbing genres, languages and disciplines, Smith proposes curious works, in the etymological sense of cura: curiosity and care for the world around us, the terrestrial and the celestial, the human and the non-human, the visible and the invisible, imagination and fiction. Thermal cameras, drones, neon lights, implantations of electronic chips and subcutaneous meteorites, atomic mutations or trance practices characterise his fluid work composed with technological and spiritual means that incorporate the dimensions of mystery and dream.
Davide Monteleone is an Italian photographer. He won World Press Photo awards in 2007, 2009, and 2011. Since 2019 Monteleone is a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow.
The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film is a non-profit private operating foundation headquartered in Rochester, New York. The foundation was established in 2010 by documentary photographer Manuel Rivera-Ortiz to support underrepresented photographers and filmmakers from less developed countries with grants, awards, exhibitions, and educational programs.
Vanessa Winship HonFRPS is a British photographer who works on long term projects of portrait, landscape, reportage and documentary photography. These personal projects have predominantly been in Eastern Europe but also the USA. Winship's books include Schwarzes Meer (2007), Sweet Nothings (2008) and She Dances on Jackson (2013).
Musée Réattu is an art museum in Arles, housing paintings, including works by Arles-born painter Jacques Réattu, drawings by Picasso, as well as sculptures and a large collection of photographs. It regularly holds exhibitions of contemporary art.
Valérie Jouve is a contemporary French photographer, video artist, and director.
Mohamed Bourouissa is an Algeria-born French photographer, based in Paris. In 2020 Bourouissa won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. His work is held in the collection of the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris.
Léon Herschtritt was a French humanist photographer. He won the Niépce Prize as a young photographer in 1960.
Les 30 × 40 or Le Club photographique de Paris was a photography club created in Paris in 1952 by Roger Doloy who was its president, with vice-president Jean-Claude Gautrand, photographer and author, and honorary president Jean-Pierre Sudre, professional photographer.
Eythar Gubara, is a Sudanese freelance photographer and activist for human rights. She is mainly known for her documentary images of everyday life in Sudan and of events during the Sudanese Revolution. In her work, she has placed a special focus on images of women, as well as on social diversity in Sudan.
Yan Morvan is a French photographer, journalist, photojournalist and author particularly recognized for his war photography and images of underground communities.
Claude Hudelot was a French sinologist, historian, radio show producer, and director of documentaries. He directed multiple cultural establishments within France and was a cultural attaché in China for eight years.
Chambre noire was a French television show dedicated to photography. The show was broadcast between 1961 and 1969.
Christian Caujolle, born February 26, 1953, in Sissonne, is a French journalist, photo agent, curator and photographer. He was one of the founders and the artistic director of the Agence VU, as well as the artistic director of the Galerie VU created in 1998. He is the artistic director of the Photo Phnom Penh festival (Cambodia), and of the Château d'Eau gallery in Toulouse.