The 51e edition of the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles was to be placed under the theme of “resistance”. Alas, the festival scheduled from June 29 to September 20 had to surrender, like the others, because of the coronavirus and the bans on large gatherings first imposed by the government.
In this communist stronghold plagued by unemployment which is transformed, in the summer, at the international crossroads of an elite dressed in linen, cancellation is a shock. That obviously cannot compensate for the two evenings of photo projection and debate around the sociologist Edgar Morin, the environmental activist Cyril Dion and Live Magazine, orchestrated in the open air by the Rencontres dans le Théâtre antique, on August 28 and 29.
Amer sentiment d’abandon
“Too little, too late in the season”, some local personalities are clamoring, determined not to let “little Rome of Gaul” doze off this summer. Under the triple slogan “Arles wants. Arles is alive. Arles is mobilizing ”, the forces are struggling to organize exhibitions, concerts and screenings until September 6. Everything, rather than the bitter feeling of abandonment left by the organizers of the Meetings.
“A minimal presence, Place de la République, between the Sainte-Anne church and the Archbishopric, which holds the thread” would have satisfied the gallery owner Anne Clergue, whose father Lucien co-founded the photo festival. “Instead of thirty exhibitions, there could have been five, in solidarity with the city”, adds the independent curator Olivier Saillard. With three times nothing – 3,000 euros financed out of his pocket – and the precious complicity of big names in the photo, such as Dominique Issermann or Paolo Roversi, the latter thus organized, with Gaël Mamine, the open-air exhibition “Lost Images” .
“Have the festivals of Aix or Avignon programmed part of their shows to show their presence? “ Sam Stourdzé, Director of Meetings
Maintaining a minimum program meant exposing the Meetings to the risk of an impossible-to-absorb deficit, pleads its director, Sam Stourdzé, in his slow phrasing of an actor. Leaving to take the direction of the Villa Medici in Rome, the latter adds: “Have the festivals of Aix or Avignon programmed part of their shows to show their presence? And then which artists would have wanted to exhibit in an incomplete edition? And how do you choose which exhibitions to keep? “ Eric Bouvet and Yan Morvan do not seem to have been asked to save their exhibition, “Hexagone”, which was to be held at the Abbey of Montmajour. Rehabilitated and co-produced with Gares & Connexions, it has however not been hooked up in Arles but, since June 25, in the stations of Lyon, Paris, and Avignon TGV.
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