The 55th edition of the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles opens its doors from July 1st.
It will honor many women who have a unique perspective on the contemporary world.
TF1info has selected four of the most exciting and emblematic of them.
A middle-aged woman, her body immersed in water up to her pool, the peaks of somewhere else on the horizon… It’s a photo by the Spanish photographer Cristina De Middel, entitled “A stone on the path ” and extract from his series “Voyage au center”, which illustrates the poster for the 55th Arles Photography Meetings which take place from July 1 to September 20. “It is inspired by the atmosphere and structure of the book Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne“, explains this 49-year-old artist, who has been living in South America for a long time, and who presents the migratory crossing from Mexico “as a heroic and courageous expedition, rather than as an escape”.
>> Cristina De Middel. At the Church of the Brothers Preachers from July 1 to August 25, 2024
Entitled “Under the Surface”, the 2024 programme was inspired by the work of the Japanese doyenne Ishiuchi Miyako, 77 years old.I didn’t get along very well with my mother when she was alive, but as I was photographing her things, it seemed to me that the distance between us was gradually narrowing.“, says the septuagenarian who immortalized blouses, shoes, dentures and even lipstick.”The photographs in the Mother’s series can never be relegated to the past, because they are revived each time they are shown“, adds the recipient of the 2024 Women in Motion Prize, saluting the career of an exceptional photographer.
>> Ishiuchi Miyako at Salle Henri-Comte, from July 1 to September 20, 2024
This edition, which gives pride of place to women behind the lens, will also host the first world retrospective of American documentary and portraitist Mary Ellen Mark, who died in 2015.I try to make photographs that are universally understood, that go beyond cultural boundaries“, said the woman who immortalized the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, the women’s liberation movement and the daily life of sex workers in India for magazines like Life, Vogue or even still Vanity Fair. “I want my photographs to deal with essential emotions and feelings that we all experience.“.
>> Mary Ellen Mark at Espace Van Gogh, from July 1 to September 29, 2024
Arles 2024 will also honor Lebanese visual artist Randa Mirza, 46, who combines photography, video, installation and performance in a work that is both spectacular and macabre. “I remember one day during the war when my mother shouted at me to run under the bombs and not look back“, says the artist about Beirutopiaa series of works, some of them premonitory, carried out between 2000 and 2022.I grew up with the conviction that the catastrophe had already occurred until the day I found myself, thirty years later, propelled by a terrible explosion through the streets of my destroyed city.”
>> Randa Mirza at La Maison des Peintres, from July 1 to September 29
>> The Arles Photography Meetings in partnership with LCI. From July 1 to September 29, 2024. The program and all the information on the official website is here!
