Third Text

29 October 2025

Leonor Veiga

‘Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025: Disobedient Images’, the 56th edition, 7 July – 5 October 2025

Every year, Les Rencontres d’Arles – the festival that began in 1970, when photography was reconsidered, reevaluated, and has since been consecrated as an art form ^[1] – has established itself as the oldest event in the world for this medium, making it a protagonist and simultaneously an influencer of contemporary photography trends. ^[2]  However, the festival consistently showcases modern photography, underscoring its importance through retrospectives of renowned masters and icons of the medium. In 2025, the exhibitions of the life and work of the American Louis Stettner (1922–2016) at the Van Gogh Space, ^[3] the Italian Letizia Battaglia (1935–2022) in the church of Saint Martin d’Arles, ^[4] and the fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) at the Mécanique Générale, ^[5] stood out.

Church of Saint Martin d’Arles, photo by Leonor Veiga

The presence of several participants from the Global South was also of great relevance to this 2025 edition. In this context, Brazil emerged as a major upholder, due to the celebrations of 2025 as the ‘Brazil-France’ year, which the Rencontres (encounters) was able to capture through various exhibitions. Among them, I highlight ‘Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction: Brazilian Modernist Photography (1939–1964)’, a major exhibition by the São Paulo group Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, founded in 1939, which transported visitors to the universe of Brazilian Concretism and its various protagonists, and ‘Retratistas do Morro’ (Portrayers of the Hill), which penetrated into the intimacy of life in the oldest favela in the country, in Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais. In addition to these, the early work of Claudia Andujar (1931– ), a Holocaust survivor and one of the most important Brazilian photographers, was also of great importance. Having achieved international fame due to her work in close relation with the Yanomami Indigenous people, Andujar explores the complexities of minority groups and taboos of all kinds. Her profile as an activist is well portrayed through her extensive visual contributions to the magazine Realidade, where her photography visually complemented the writing of Jorge Andrade.

The Global South in Themes and People

The presence of the Global South materialised through the themes explored – Indigenous presence must be highlighted through the exhibition ‘On Country: Photography from Australia’, as seen in the poster image of the event. Through this exhibition, we realise that ancestry and Indigenous discourses are ongoing sources of conflict. In the words of the Festival Director, Christoph Wiesner: ‘Photography is considered as a tool of resistance, testimony, and social transformation in the face of contemporary crises.’ ^[6]  The group show explored the deep relationship that First Peoples have with their land, and covered various themes such as the conflict with settlers, Aboriginal expressions and music, and the most recent effects of globalisation and the climate crisis on these populations.

Exhibition poster, 2025, courtesy of Rencontres d’Arles

The presence of sexual minorities, despite appearing in notes, was substantial. In a tenuous configuration, it was found in several exhibitions, such as those by Andujar and Battaglia, and in a totalising form in Brandon Gercara’s exhibition. An artist who lives and works in the French archipelago of Réunion, they work the discourse of French overseas regions from their condition as a non-binary artist, on the one hand, and a multicultural product, on the other. Gercara’s work aims to transform colonial traumas into emancipatory artistic material. With a structured discourse, Gercara uses strong words, such as Orientalism and Eurocentrism, and recalls, in Creole, the archipelagos’ ancestral culture and its inherent tolerance, while rejecting the globalisation of thought traditionally imposed onto colonial territories.

This set of themes, to which the Brazilian presence is added, denote that these matters – ancestry, first peoples, Indigenous discourses – are not a passing fad, but, rather, issues of the contemporary moment.
 

Cultural Diplomacy through Images Indocile  ^[7]

Brazil’s presence as central feels like a proposal for ‘cultural diplomacy’. This American concept advocates ‘developing respect for others and their ways of thinking... Let there be dialogue’. ^[8]  Establishing a dialogue between the two countries (France and Brazil) was precisely the motivational factor in Arles for 2025. However, in France, the protagonism of the show is directed toward ‘Images Indocile’ (translated into English as ‘Disobedient Images’), the elucidative title of the programme. Brazil is presented on several fronts: from the urban elite of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCBB), through the favela of Belo Horizonte, between 1970 and 1990 by means of a selection from the archive of 250,000 negatives captured by photographers João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, to the militant look of Andujar’s early years of activity. This diversity of registers – the black and white of the first, the colour of the second and the mystery of the third – allows a reading of Brazilian heterogeneity. And it shows how different protagonists – artists from the metropolis of São Paulo, photographers from Belo Horizonte, and a naturalised woman who came from post-conflict Europe – reveal varying visions of the country. If the former allows us to imagine a sophisticated and modern country, the second shows popular culture through children and young people, while the latter practically hides the subjects of their work. There were several ‘Brazils’ in the 2025 ‘Rencontres’, and captured from different points of view.
 

José Yalenti, Parallels and Diagonals, ca 1950, Banco Itaú Collection, in ‘Construction Deconstruction Reconstruction: Brazilian Modernist Photography (1939–1964)’, Arles, 2025, courtesy of the Yalenti family and Rencontres d’Arles
 

Afonso Pimenta, Zoi’s Son, Comunidade da Serra, Belo Horizonte, MG, 1989, in ‘Retratistas do Moro: João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, Reflections from Serra Community, Belo Horizonte (1970–1990)’, Arles, 2025, courtesy of the artist and Rencontres d’Arles
 

Claudia Andujar, from the A Sõnia series, ca 1971, in ‘Claudia Andujar: In the Place of the Other’, Arles, 2025, courtesy of the artist, Instituto Moreira Salles and Rencontres d’Arles

Retrospectives

Louis Stettner’s retrospective bridged the gap between the two continents of North America and Europe. Known for advocating the genre of humanist photography practised in France, Stettner curated an exhibition of French photography in New York in 1947 that was initially banned by the US authorities as it was considered subversive. Yet, when it finally opened in 1948, it was a tremendous success. His life was also marked by the FBI’s investigation of his personal life between 1969 and 1977, a fact that did not deter him – ‘he didn't care’ – having even gone to the USSR and Cuba. His message, recorded on video, to future generations of artists, to whom he conveys to dedicate themselves entirely to their own agency, is a reminder of his activism and denotes an eternally youthful spirit – someone for whom life, and living, was everything. Stettner began his career as a war photographer, having been in Hiroshima in 1945 after the detonation of the atomic bomb. In the same year, he was in Luzon, in the Philippines. From then on, he portrayed American life in ‘non-places’ ^[9] such as the New York subway or Penn station. In the 1950s, Stettner travelled to the Netherlands, Mexico and the island of Ibiza. The photographs he captured then, in the 1970s, show a significant change in contemporary urban life: passers-by no longer gaze at one another and a loneliness can be felt in each individual person. Stettner died in Saint-Ouen, France, where he lived for much of the rest of his life.

Louis Stettner, Metro, New York, 1946, in ‘The World of Louis Stettner (1922–2016)’, Arles, 2025, photo by Leonor Veiga

Women, Protagonists in Photography

It is interesting to consider how many women have dedicated themselves to the medium of photography since the 1970s, when photography was affirming itself as an artistic medium per se. Women’s interest in photography may mean that it constituted an open space for them and their practice – a space it was still possible for women to fill, due to the possibility of defining the rules while they were being determined. At that time, photography served to communicate and document the social changes that were unfolding all over the world. If women were the object of interest of the cameras until the 1950s, from the 1960s onwards photography’s use by women’s liberation movements is remarkable. During the 1960s – when used by women – photography allowed for intimate looks. This is the case of Letizia Battaglia, who, because she was a woman and therefore ‘not considered a threat’, ^[10] was able to access the interiors of the homes of the inhabitants of Palermo, in Sicily. The possibility of accessing different stories is also conveyed in the US Route 1 project by Berenice Abbott, who in 1954 drove the historical route from Maine to the Florida Keys. Abbot’s work was re-enacted, reconsidered and reworked – and thus crossed and updated – by the duo Anna Fox and Karen Knorr between 2015 and 2025. This intergenerational dialogue shows how, through archives, profound changes experienced by society (whether economic, migratory or identitarian) can be revealed, allowing a broader view of life.

Berenice Abbott, Roadside Diner, New Jersey, 1954, in ‘Berenice Abbott, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr, US Route 1’, Arles, 2025, courtesy of the Berenice Abbott Archive, The Image Centre © Estate of Ronald Kurtz/Getty Images
 

Anna Fox and Karen Knorr, Monument, Balsam Valley, Maine, 2023, in ‘Berenice Abbott, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr, US Route 1’, Arles, 2025, courtesy of the artists, Centre for British Photography and Galerie Les filles du calvaire and Rencontres d’Arles

Experimental and Contemporary Records

There was still a high prevalence of experimentation in this exhibition. Therefore, the annual Rencontres d’Arles also constitutes a laboratory of trends. In 2025, the translucent photograph by Raphaëlle Peria, one of the winners (with curator Fanny Robin) of the 2025 BMW Art Makers award, stood out. The technique Peria uses crosses photography, silkscreen printing and engraving, resulting in three-dimensional objects that communicate with Indonesian shadow puppetry. Peria could be heard explaining in the video that accompanied the installation: ‘the artist becomes a craftsman’.

Raphaëlle Peria, Lifting the Veils on the Past, 2025, in ‘Raphaëlle Peria and Fanny Robin: Crossing the Missing Fragment’, Arles, 2025, courtesy of the artist, BMW Art Makers and Rencontres d’Arles

Equally new was the monumental, strong and sophisticated register of Carine Krecké, winner of the Luxembourg Photo Award. The series Losing North was an installation that occupied the entire Chapelle de Charité and reveals how, between 2018 and 2025, the artist dedicated herself obsessively to collecting satellite images on Google Earth of the war in Syria. Among other things, her selection reveals the destruction of Damascus, and testimonies she found online of individuals, like Prophet and Hezbii, and how the dictator Assad, in successive attacks on civilians, probably eliminated them. The hyper-violence of this work comprising six years of death and terror, although presented in a fragmented way through an immersive installation, is very well structured and the narratives she builds are sensorial. The artist reminds that such material is available online free of charge, as if she was inviting audiences to produce new reports.

Carine Krecké, Losing North, Chapelle de la Charité, Arles, 2025, installation view, photo by Leonor Veiga

Geometries of Silence, the work of Swiss photographer Béatrice Helg at the Musée Réattu, was innovative and experimental in its blurring of categories. Framed as ‘constructed photography’, Helg’s making of the genre merges hyperrealist painting with surreal and constructed geometric landscapes that recall the tradition of sculpture. The resulting poetic environments sometimes bring to mind inhabited planets, and, at other times, architectural compositions illustrated by the likeness of raw materials such as rusty iron and layers of stained glass. Her work effectively transports the viewer to idiosyncratic places, in which time and space are suspended.

Béatrice Helg, Geometries of Silence, Musée Réattu, Arles, 2025, installation view, photo by Leonor Veiga

Les Rencontres d’Arles is a festival that looks inwards – it also includes numerous local initiatives, like the exhibition of the ENSP Generation from the National High School of Photography – as well as outwards, through themes that reveal the contemporary moment, one which necessitates counter-current voices. To this end, the festival grounds each edition on personal and institutional archives, revealing a variety of visions. Unlike the 2024 edition, in 2025 the focus rested on an assessment from and of the Global South, evident in the protagonism of Brazil and the Indigenous communities punctually presented throughout the exhibitions. It is an exhibition that can never be seen in its entirety – the Grand Arles Express, for example, is an ensemble of several displays outside of Arles that decentralised the town, one that is also a capital of French Provence – and to which it is crucial to return every year. This is also an exhibition in which the presence of female photographers is remarkable – as was also the case in 2024 – revealing how photography has served as a platform for feminine creation since it was considered an art form in its own full right in the 1970s when the festival was initiated.
 

^[1]    See Douglas Crimp, ‘Photographs at the End of Modernism’, in On the Museum’s Ruins, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, pp 2–31

^[2]    See ‘Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025’, accessed 28 September 2025

^[3]    A conglomeration of several religious monasteries that housed the poor and the sick, built from 1550 onwards, the Van Gogh Space is the former Hôtel-Dieu, a psychiatric hospital that was the home of the Dutch painter between 1888 and 1889, and depicted by the artist on several occasions. In 1986, the space lost its hospital function and was converted into a cultural centre. See ‘Arpenter Le Chemin: L'Espace Van Gogh’, accessed 28 September 2025.

^[4]     The church was erected in the ninth century, desacralised during the French Revolution, having served as headquarters of the Cooperative of the Union of Wool Professionals of Merino d’Arles, as indicated by the inscription engraved on the façade. Nowadays, it hosts numerous concerts and cultural events. See the Wikipedia page for ‘Église Saint-Martin d'Arles’, accessed 28 September 2025.

^[5]    Initially a place for the repair of steam locomotives, these industrial buildings are now part of the exhibition space of the LUMA, the newest museum in Arles; see ‘La Mécanique Générale’ on the Rencontres website, accessed 28 September 2025.

^[6]    See ‘Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025’, accessed 28 September 2025

^[7]   This was the slogan of the 2025 festival; see ‘Arles 2025: Images Indociles’, accessed 28 September 2025.

^[8]   See Cultural Diplomacy: The Linchpin of Public Diplomacy, the US Department of State’s Report of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy, September 2005, accessed 28 September 2025

^[9]    Definition by the French ethnologist and anthropologist Marc Augé, who contrasts them with the home and spaces of intimacy; see Non-lieux: Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Editions du Seuil, Moudon, 1992.

^[10]   Statement made by Battaglia in the video Amore Amaro (2012), displayed in the exhibition.

Leonor Veiga is an art historian and curator based in Montpellier, France. She was a Guest Researcher at LUCAS, the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (2023–2025) and a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Fine Arts School of the University of Lisbon (2020–2023). She obtained her PhD from Leiden University in 2018 with the dissertation 'The Third Avant-garde: contemporary art from Southeast Asia recalling tradition'. In 2019, the dissertation was awarded the biannual Humanities Dissertation Prize by the International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS).