From Monday July 4 until September 25, the image takes over many places in Arles during the 53rd Arles Photography Meetings. This internationally renowned festival is therefore resuming its cruising speed after two slack years – cancellation in 2020 and reduced edition in 2021. This year, feminist photo work is highlighted.
On the picture rails of Arles, this year there are works that relate to very topical themes. Some resonate with the Ukrainian conflict. This is the case, for example, of a retrospective of 160 years of humanitarian photos.
But above all, this 2022 vintage is above all very feminine and very feminist. One of the most emblematic exhibitions is the one dedicated to theAmerican Lee Miller, famous model of the 1920s, whose career as a photographer has long been undervalued. Christoph Wiesner is the director of the festival: “ We know her less for her freelance work as a photographer, both in the studio, in her studio in New York, and then for the photos she took when the American troops arrived, since she was doing part of the 5 photographers who accompanied the American troops until the liberation of the concentration camps. For me, it was important to also have such an iconic and extraordinary female figure.”
Sexism already denounced 50 years ago
In the same vein, another exhibition called ” A feminist avant-garde of the 1970s presents photos never seen before in France from the Viennese Verbund collection. We can see the works of more than 70 artists who already proposed fifty years ago a new image of women, denouncing sexism and the structures of patriarchal power.
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