The event was created by three visionaries: an Arles photographer, Lucien Clergue, a writer, Michel Tournier, and a historian, Jean-Maurice Rouquette. At the time, photography was nowhere to be seen, neither in museums, nor in exhibition halls, nor in festivals. For the first edition, there were only three exhibitions and a hundred or so visitors. The Rencontres have grown since then...

More than 50 years of festivals

Every year for more than 50 years, some twenty exhibitions have been held throughout the city in historic and emblematic places in Arles. An unmissable worldwide photography event for professionals, amateurs and tourists, which each year offers the opportunity to (re)discover hundreds of artists.

Faithful to its vocation as a pioneer, the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles festival has contributed greatly to the institutional recognition of what was previously considered a "minor art". Over the years, the eclectic programme has been more than ever focused on discovery and the permanent questioning of the way photography is exhibited.

Visible or invisible, a summer revealed: the programme

The programme of the Rencontres consists of five thematic sections: "Performing", "Experimenting", "Emerging", "Exploring and witnessing" and "Revisiting". The ambition of this summer's edition is to make us see what is staring us in the face, but which takes so long to appear. Photography and the photographers and artists who use it are there to remind us of what we do not want to see or hear.

One of the key exhibitions of this 53rd edition, "A Feminist Avant-Garde", brings together at the Mécanique générale no less than 200 artworks from the Verbund collection (Vienna), produced by 72 women artists (Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta, Francesca, Valie Export and many others) who, in the 1970s, were the first to propose new representations of women.

To enrich this performance theme, the Church of Saint Anne will present the work of experimental photographer Babette Mangolte on the New York choreographic scene, who will receive the Women in Motion 2022 prize on this occasion, while Susan Meiselas, winner of the prize in 2019, will propose an immersive installation between images and sounds in the Church of Saint Blaise with the help of musician Marta Gentilucci.

Finally, juries will present various awards and prizes to the best artists of the Rencontres, including

• Discovery Prize
• Audience Award
• Author's book prize
• Photo-text book prize