Christoph Wiesner introduced this edition with an anecdote: in his fight against “gender ideology”, President Donald Trump ordered a purge of the U.S. administration’s archives. Among the losses? A photograph of the Hiroshima bomber, removed due to its title, Enola Gay, which was misinterpreted by artificial intelligence.
“Photography fluctuates, but fortunately, it is multifaceted, persistent, and will always return,” said the festival’s director in response. “In this new edition of the Rencontres, images are explored in a polyphonic manner. Otherness is present through cultural exchanges, testimonies, and social transformations. Commitment is at the heart of the entire program at a time when our world is affected by the rise of nationalism, growing nihilism, and environmental crises,” he continued.
This perspective is also reflected in the festival’s poster, created by Tony Albert, David Charles Collins, and Kieran Lawson. It features a member of the Australian Aboriginal Warakurna community, proudly dressed as a superhero — a striking symbol of resilience. With more than 5,000 works, this 56th edition claims inclusivity, highlighting both emerging and established photographers, featuring numerous international artists, particularly from Australia and Brazil, and giving women a prominent place.
After welcoming a record 160,000 visitors in 2024, the festival aims this year to help audiences view photography as a true tool of resistance.
Questioning history
Political commitment, the festival’s guiding theme, is reflected in many of the exhibitions presented. Among the collective exhibitions of the 2025 edition stands “On Country”, which brings together various Australian Indigenous photographers to explore their definition of a country — a spiritual connection to the land, far from the dominant Western perspective.
On its side, “Ancestral Futures” celebrates the contemporary Brazilian art scene with a dynamic scenography blending photography, video, collage, and artificial intelligence. This exhibition aims to “question the past and historical violence, challenge the construction of stereotypes, and contest the official history of the territory,” commented Christoph Wiesner.
In “Double”, Carol Newhouse and Carmen Winant “explore and reinvent the lesbian and feminist self in the United States during the 1970s,” said the director. Meanwhile, in “Dancing on Ashes – Making Fire”, Lila Neutre interprets twerking and voguing—dance styles popular in marginalized Black and Latinx queer communities in America — as forms of festive, aesthetic, and political resistance. “They Deviate, They Persist, They Storm”, by Agnès Geoffray, questions “our relationship with norms and morality” through the experiences of young girls labeled as “deviant” and confined in French “preservation schools” from the late 19th century. “She creates personal portraits of those who flee, those who stand their ground, and those who resist,” added Wiesner.
In Palermo, from the 1970s onward, Letizia Battaglia documented the crimes of the Sicilian mafia, an experience that deeply marked her. She once said, “My images are filled with blood.” Finally, Holocaust survivor Claudia Andujar, who settled in Brazil in 1955, devoted her work to defending the Yanomami people of the Amazon. “In Place of Others” stands as the first international retrospective dedicated to this period of her work.
In addition to this “resistance through imagery,” the 56th edition of the Rencontres d’Arles also, as every year, pays tribute to renowned artists — Annie Ernaux, Nan Goldin, and Yves Saint Laurent — alongside emerging photographers with well-established careers such as Todd Hido, Kourtney Roy, and Diana Markosian. The program is further enriched by Arles Associé, featuring exhibitions by Luma — David Armstrong, Peter Fischli, No Tzu Nyen, Koo Jeong A, and Bas Smets — as well as the collective exhibition Sortilèges (Spells), which will be displayed at the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation.
The Rencontres d’Arles will take place from July 7 to October 5, 2025, in Arles. More information is available on the festival’s website.
