THE 47TH RENCONTRES D’ARLES A successful opening week from 4 to 10 July: public attendance was up by 12% th
Culture and Communication Minister Audrey Azoulay opened the 47 Rencontres d’Arles on Monday 4 July and President François Hollande honoured the festival with a visit on Thursday 7 July. Rencontres d’Arles Director Sam Stourdzé devised the festival’s 2016 program, which focuses on eclecticism and breaking down walls between disciplines again this year. There is no overarching theme, but rather broad chapters attesting to photography’s diversity, from revisited street photography to African photography, new approaches to documentary photography, collections, outside-the-frame formats and installations. The programme highlights young photographers. Artists vying for the Discovery Award are more integrated into the festival than ever. ATTENDANCE FROM 4 TO 10 JULY • • •
15,200 visitors (12% more than 2015) 35% of visitors were from outside France An enthusiastic local following: over 2,350 Arles residents came to events (up by 20%).
KEY FIGURES Nearly 40 exhibitions at 19 venues throughout the city 137 artists and 38 curators Six evening events at workshops, various exhibition venues in town and the ancient theatre 115 public events (60 in 2015): guided tours with artists and curators in attendance, conversations with artists and curators, book signings, live radio broadcasts 88 publishers at Cosmos Arles Books NEW Three new venues this year: exhibitions and public events at Ground Control, located in a great hall near the railway station; Cosmos-Arles Books at the former Collège Mistral; and the Olympus Photographic Conversation at the Hôtel de Luppé. The Grand Arles Express: the wind of photography blows through the South This year’s big news is that the Rencontres d’Arles is reaching out to the region to meet public interest in photography in the south of France. The Grand Arles Express makes stops at the Collection Lambert in Avignon, Carré d'Art in Nîmes and Villa Méditerranée in Marseille. The launch of the VR Arles Festival, the first virtual reality artistic event, by the Rencontres d’Arles, BNP Parisbas and Fisheye magazine The launch of the Madame Figaro-Arles Photo Award for a female photographer who exhibits work at the festival.
The launch of the Photo-Text Award The €6,000 Photo-Text Award is for the author(s) of the best book combining images and texts published between 1 June 2015 and 31 May 2016. Any attempt to bring writing and photography closer together and foster dialogue between them— interweaving text and images, preponderantly using writing in a layout or including an author’s text relating to photography—is eligible for the Photo-Text Award.
Main partner: the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature. A new format for Photography Nights This year, the festival offered the public five free evening events during opening week: an opening and closing night party at the Parc des Ateliers; an Africa Pop party at Ground Control on Tuesday 5 July with projections, a concert and a DJ; a literary evening on Wednesday 6 July with 14 readings in different venues echoing the exhibitions, which were free of charge and remained open until 10 p.m.; and the Night of the Year at the Étienne paper mill on Thursday 7 July with approximately 30 works proposed by artists and institutions continuously projected on seven screens from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m.. The literature programme During Photography and Literature night on 6 July, contemporary writers (Christophe Fiat, Céline Minard, Sylvain Prudhomme, Olivia Rosenthal) read passages from their works that echo the exhibitions. OPENING WEEK AWARDS THE 2016 BOOK AWARDS Main partner: the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature Amount: €6,000 shared between the author and publisher With support from Fnac for the author’s book • THE AUTHOR’S BOOK AWARD Winner: Mariken Wessels, Taking Off. Henry My Neighbor, Art Paper Editions (Belgium) • THE HISTORICAL BOOK AWARD Winner: Annette Behrens, (in matters of) Karl, Fw: Books (the Netherlands) • THE PHOTO-TEXT BOOK AWARD (new!) Winner: Edmund CLARK & Crofton Black, Negative Publicity: Artefacts Of Extraordinary Rendition, Aperture & Magnum Foundation (the United States) THE SECOND LUMA RENCONTRES DUMMY BOOK AWARD An award to defray the costs of publishing a dummy book project Winners: Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber You and Me. A Project between Bosnia, Germany and the US Amount: €25,000 Special mention: Mathieu Asselin for Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation Three hundred applications were received this year. The 2015 winner, The Jungle Book, by Yann Gross, was published in three languages by three publishers: VF Actes-Sud (France), VA Aperture (United States), VEsp Editorial RM (Spain) THE DISCOVERY AWARD Winner: Sarah Waiswa Born 1980 in Kampala, Uganda. Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya. Amount: €25,000 THE FIRST MADAME FIGARO-ARLES 2016 PHOTO AWARD Winner: Laïa Abril Born 1986 in Barcelona, Spain. Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. This year, Laïa Abril presents the exhibition A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: Abortion. Amount: €5,000 THE VR ARLES FESTIVAL JURY GRAND PRIX Winner: Aaron Bradbury for his film LoVR, which transcribes what happens in the brain when people fall in love at first sight into data. Amount: €5,000 to develop new virtual reality projects that represent the future of video art.
PHOTO FOLIO REVIEW 130 experts from 20 countries and 250 participants from 28 countries in six days Winner: David Fathi (France) for his series Wolfgang, which will be exhibited at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2017. Four special mentions Karolina Paatos, Romania Maija Tammi, Finland Sonja Hamad, Germany Eric Leleu, France THE SECOND COSMOS-ARLES BOOKS An event focusing on new publishing practices Cosmos-Arles Books is back in the city centre: the courtyard of the former Collège Mistral. 88 publishers in attendance during opening week The Cosmos, Pro Helvetia, Le Point, The Eyes Talk lecture series Many book signings at publishers’ stands BUDGET €6,700,000 38% from public funding 42% from self-generating revenue (ticket sales alone account for 25% of the festival’s budget) 18% from sponsors THE RENCONTRES D’ARLES 2017 th
See you at the 48 Rencontres d’Arles from 3 July to 24 September 2017!
PRESS CONTACT CLAUDINE COLIN COMMUNICATION Marika Bekier marika@claudinecolin.com Virginie Thomas virginie@claudinecolin.com T: +33 (0)1 42 72 60 01
SUPPORT The Rencontres d’Arles warmly thanks all its partners.