Les Rencontres d'Arles 2025: Photography as Battlefield and Ritual

The 2025 edition of Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles (July 7 – October 5) transforms the Roman city into a sprawling exhibition space. Batia Suter's 'Octahydra' at the Roman cryptoporticus merges digital collage with ancient stone. Marion and Philippe Jacquier's gallery Lumière des Roses presents 'Elogio della fotografia anonima,' featuring 10,000 anonymous silver prints collected over 20 years. Latin American participation includes Musuk Nolte's Amazonian shamanic visions, Octavio Anguilar's Oaxacan ritual masks, and Daniel Mebarek's 'Fotos Gratis' mobile studio in a Bolivian market. US photography is represented by Berenice Abbott, Anna Fox, and Karen Knorr's Route 1 series, Nan Goldin's video mixing her works with the Louvre collection, and Todd Hido's 'The Light from Within' at the Van Gogh space. Diana Markosian's 'Father' and Camille Leveque's 'In Search of the Father' explore paternal archetypes. Claudia Andujar's retrospective covers her pre-Yanomami work from the 1960s-70s. Kourtney Roy's 'The Tourist' offers kitsch self-portraits. Letizia Battaglia's monumental retrospective features 100 prints from her Palermo archive. Alba Zari's 'Fear of Mirrors' at the Book Award explores liquid digital identity.