The 57th version of Les Rencontres de la Photographie feels unusually open-ended. In previous years, the competition has tended to anchor to unfastened but clearly articulated curatorial propositions. This summer time, director Christoph Wiesner as an alternative affords what he describes as “an area for complexity and attentiveness”. The programme resists “simplification, division and discount”, he writes in his introductory essay for the competition’s catalogue, embracing images’s capability to disclose “what goes unnoticed, what endures, what circulates, what’s handed on and what connects”.
That considering is mirrored throughout greater than 40 exhibitions which are organised into broad constellations—comparable to ‘Independence’, ‘Types of Life’ and ‘The Unsure Archive’—reasonably than a single overarching theme. At instances the competition feels diffuse, with exhibitions starting from posthumous retrospectives and historic surveys (William Klein: This Option to Heaven, Animal Mannequin: 200 Years of Images) to process-driven abstraction and up to date set up (Meghann Riepenhoff’s cyanotypes created in nature, Lara Tabet’s microbiological altarpieces).
But the absence of a inflexible framework challenges guests to seek out their very own connections in a welcome various to the sledgehammer strategy. And operating quietly by way of lots of the strongest exhibitions is a priority not merely with images as image-making, however with images as a approach of developing historical past, reminiscence and id. Nowhere is that extra evident than in Ghana! Dreaming Independence 1957-1976 (till 4 October). One of many mental anchors of this 12 months’s programme, it’s put in on the primary ground of the Palais de l’Archevêché on one aspect of the Place de la République, reverse a fourth-century Roman obelisk and the ornate Twelfth-century façade of the Église Saint-Trophime. Reasonably than retelling the acquainted political historical past of the West African state’s independence from Britain in 1957, curator Damarice Amao examines the visible tradition by way of which the newly unbiased nation imagined itself and its future.
Images seems not merely as documentation however as a constructing block in the direction of statehood. Reproduced throughout books, magazines, stamps, textiles, postcards and official publications, photos grew to become central to the development of a contemporary nationwide id. Photographers together with James Barnor, Felicia Abban, Willis E. Bell and Paul Strand are introduced into dialogue with up to date Ghanaian artists comparable to Carlos Idun-Tawiah and Rita Mawuena Benissan, whose works query how that visible inheritance continues to form concepts of nationhood at present. It’s an exhibition that demonstrates how decolonisation was as a lot an act of idealistic illustration as one in all politics, and the way images stay lively individuals in that course of reasonably than passive historic information.
Stan Douglas’s Vancouver, 15 June 2011, from the collection 2011 ≠ 1848, 2021© Stan Douglas. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner
If Ghana! appears on the making of nationwide historical past, Stan Douglas’s Our bodies By no means Lie, introduced at Luma Arles (till 10 January 2027), examines how historical past itself is constructed. Douglas has lengthy occupied a particular place between images, cinema, theatre and set up, producing meticulously staged works that reconstruct missed or unresolved historic moments to look at concepts of energy, resistance and the formation of collective reminiscence. The exhibition consists of each the video works for which he’s greatest identified and nonetheless photos, together with the mural-sized Vancouver, 15 June 2011, which re-enacts the Stanley Cup riot (also called ‘the smartphone riot’, after a reported million photos have been despatched to police investigators, captured on cellphones) in his hometown. Music as a strong social drive stays an everlasting topic, and the centrepiece of Our bodies By no means Lie is a brand new movie commissioned by Luma. On one degree, Beautiful Corpse (2026) is an absorbing homage to flamenco as an artform, effectively price 25 minutes of your consideration, its split-screen viewpoint emphasising the gamers’ depth and gesture. On one other, set within the Nineteen Fifties throughout Basic Franco’s rule, it explores flamenco as a coded type of resilience and resistance.
Put in at monumental scale at La Mécanique Générale, one of many ginormous former railway workshops that make up the revitalised Parc des Ateliers, the exhibition demonstrates the precision with which Douglas choreographs motion, structure and light-weight, creating photos that possess each a documentary impulse and cinematic spectacle. It’s among the many competition’s most bold up to date shows, not merely due to its scale however as a result of it exemplifies images’s increasing relationship with transferring picture and set up. In doing so, it additionally embodies Wiesner’s perception that images continues to generate new methods of seeing reasonably than merely recording the world.
Probably the most surprising exhibition comes on the Musée Réattu, the place domestically born dressmaker Christian Lacroix repeats his 2008 position as visitor curator, albeit on a smaller scale. Images Collector (till 4 October) is much less an exhibition about trend (although there are many his magical drawings on the higher flooring) than in regards to the associative pleasures of wanting. Lacroix’s alternatives transfer freely between celebrated photographers, nameless vernacular photos and surprising visible juxtapositions, following intuition reasonably than typical artwork historical past.
Depthless, life-size photos by Katerina Jebb, made utilizing a handheld scanner, stand out, showing like ghostly apparitions of the museum’s archive, mingling with the works of Arles’s most well-known painter, Jacques Réattu, who purchased the constructing in 1796. Previous and new collide in great, shocking constellations, amongst them a Sarah Moon {photograph} hanging alongside vintage collectible figurines and drawings representing L’Arlésienne (The girl from Arles). The result’s an exhibition constructed on curiosity and visible reminiscence, suggesting that collections are autobiographies assembled by way of photos.
Additionally it is fittingly housed within the museum that established France’s first images division in 1965 underneath the steerage of photographer Lucien Clergue and historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette—a transfer that helped lay the foundations for what would change into the Rencontres 5 years later. That quiet historic echo offers the exhibition an added resonance. After a competition largely involved with rewriting histories and recovering missed narratives, Lacroix reminds us that images additionally survives by way of the personal passions of those that protect, gather and join photos throughout generations.
