A summer of photo festivals

France. The Arles Meetings, extended this year until October 5 to satisfy a regional audience more inclined to come there in September, offer around thirty exhibitions placed under the sign of “intro images”. The programming is punctuated by great classics, such as the unprecedented retrospective on Louis Stettner (1922-2016) or the history of Brazilian modernist photography. The women photographers are however particularly numerous in this 56th edition with, at the head of the poster, Nan Goldin, Claudia Andujar, Letizia Battaglia and an unprecedented installation of Batia Suter in cryptoportic, hidden part of the forum. In this register of unpublished registers are: Agnès Geoffray’s investigation into minors placed by justice at the beginning of the 20th century in preservation schools; Raphaëlle Peria and the Canal du Midi of her childhood; The Marion and Philippe Jacquier collection; and the road trip American of Anna Fox and Karen Knorr on Route 1 from the photographs of Berenice Abbott taken in the 1950s.

The recent history of Australian photography bringing together Aboriginal photographers or not is also the subject of an exhibition specially created by the Festival, in the same way as the retrospective “Béatrice Helg” designed by the Réattu Museum, the “David Armstrong” monograph in Luma Arles and the 20 years of the Myop agency, three exhibitions in the program associated with meetings. Among the exhibitions already seen elsewhere, stand out “The Tourist”, by Kourtney Roy; “Chambre 107” by Jean-Michel André; “The omens of an interior glow” by Todd Hido and the vision of Stéphane Couturier from Villa E-1027 from Eileen Gray to Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

presented at Montmajour Abbey.

La Gacilly, Guilvinec, Lectoure

© Elsa and Johanna

At the Guilvinec Photo Festival (Finistère), much smaller dimension, “women and the sea” gives pride of place to the work of women photographers including that Natalya Saprunova on the Inuit populations of Western Canada. In Yvré-l’Évêque (Sarthe), near Le Mans, the 13th photographic season of the Royal Abbey of the Epau reveals the Lucioles of the Japanese forests of Kazuaki Koseki and the seabed of Narelle Autio and Fabien Michenet.

Another tone with the photographic summer of Lectoure (Gers), placed this year under the police station of the Damarice Amao photography historian. Among the eight exhibitions presented, one, important, was devoted to Arlene Gottfried (1950-2017), illustrating American documentary photography of the second half of the 20th century. Nelly Monnier and Éric Tabuchi, welcomed in residence at the Art and Photography Center in Lectoure, continue their “atlas of natural regions” started in 2010.

From Saint-Nazaire to Deauville