Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie 2011

Hundreds of photography books go on show at the Rencontres, at which the European Publishers Award for Photography is announced.

By Roger Overall

If someone told you they'd just been to the big international photography festival in Arles, southern France, you'd be well within your rights to ask: "Which one?" There are, as best I can tell, five festivals—all of which run concurrently, some of which appear in each other's promotional literature. As one French photographer put it while trying to explain the situation: "It's complicated."

The first is the official festival, the real Rencontres, which puts on the prestigious exhibitions, workshops, book signings, talks and portfolio reviews in the most high-profile venues (including the town's Roman ruins). It runs from early July to mid-September every year.

The second festival is the Voies Off, or the "Off" for short, best described as the official unofficial festival that runs during the opening week of its bigger sibling.

Arles 3 comprises the dozens of exhibitions put on in gallery spaces (or any space, for that matter, including cafes, courtyards and basements) organized by independent photographers. By the way, such is the demand for a space during opening week of the official festival that photographers are rumoured to offer as much as €2,000 to shoehorn themselves in somewhere. The calibre of picture buyers, agents and international gallery owners who visit the festival each year is such that a few grand to secure the right space is considered a good investment.

Arles 4 is a single-evening extravaganza, hosted in a bohemian part of Arles called la Roquette. It’s a night of projections on walls and temporary screens, along with some street theatre. One lady spent the evening orating from her living room window this year. My French is bad, so I don't know whether she was any good. She held the attention of a crowd, mind you.

Arles 5 consists of the guerrilla exhibitions that spring up on alleyway walls and in shop windows overnight. Some of these even have official openings with wine and nibbles. When a friend of mine asked a young photographer on the street when the opening of his exhibition was, he was told: "You’re standing in it."

A single-print exhibit, an unofficial one, on the streets of Arles itself.

Small wonder that at the end of opening week the biggest question on everyone's lips is: "What did I miss?"

Surely the highlight of this year's festival is the main exhibit by the New York Times Magazine. I say "main" exhibit because there is a second, inferior NYT Magazine show consisting of stenciled tear sheets. The latter has the feel of a filler event. Maybe it is, I don't know, but with around two-thirds of the funding for the main festival coming from the public purse and private donations there is a possibility that cheap padding was needed to give this year's festival some bulk in the face of reduced funding in harsh economic times.

Anyway, none of that should detract from the main NYT Magazine exhibit, which is both exciting and engaging in terms of the variety of work on display and the way in which it is presented. Hard-news reportage sits next to celebrity portraiture, in most cases with explanation and supporting documentation about how a shoot came to publication. The many telexes, faxes, emails, notepad pages and so on give a terrific insight into the photographic process at the magazine, allowing you a glimpse behind the veil.

You can't talk about the NYT Magazine show without mentioning what many on the cafe terraces around Place du Forum, Arles' main square and social focal point, said were the most incredible black-and-white prints they had ever seen: Sebastião Salgado’s photographs of Kuwaiti oil well fires being quelled after the first Gulf War. "Breathtaking" is an overused adjective. In this instance, it is deserved.

Which I suppose brings us neatly to the greatest disappointment of this year's Rencontres, in my opinion at least. Shunted out to the edge of town is what should be the event's star turn: The Mexican Suitcase—an exhibition of the presumed lost negatives belonging to Robert Capa, David (Chim) Seymour and Gerda Taro, produced predominantly during the Spanish Civil War. The miserable exhibit space was badly lit, making it hard to see the photographs on display in some instances. In that regard, they may as well have stayed hidden in a plastic bag at the bottom of a cupboard in Mexico (the "suitcase." if there ever was one, is more a marketing concept than reality).

Wang Qingsong's ambitious 42-metre long print titled "The History of Monuments," incorporating 200 models photographed over two weeks.

As a whole, though, the first week of the Rencontres cannot disappoint. Arles is beautiful; no photographer could resist its visual charms. Good food and wine surrounds you. And it is easy to strike up conversations and friendships with photographers from around the world, including those who actually have work on show. Unless, of course, you don't share a common language. Upon leaving Wang Qingsong's remarkable single-print exhibition, I more or less collided with the photographer himself. Presuming he had no English, and me with no Chinese, all I could think to do was smile and shake his hand vigorously, while saying "Fantastic!" over and over again. I think the poor man thought he was being mugged.

Roger

Roger Overall is a professional documentary photographer based in Cork, Ireland.

ADDENDUM by Roger: Regarding The Mexican Suitcase: two readers have commented on the existence of an actual suitcase, one stating that it was on display in New York.

The physical containers of the negatives consist of a green cardboard box, a red/brown cardboard box (both containing rolls of film), and a box that contained film in envelopes. The red/brown box and the green box look to have been handmade for their purpose and, like the Mona Lisa, are much smaller in person than you would imagine in your mind. Neither are an actual suitcase, or resemble one.

Nor was a single suitcase on show in Arles. In fact, that would be impossible. None was ever recovered with the negatives. In the documentary by Trisha Ziff about the negatives and their recovery and place in history that premiered at the festival, Mexican filmmaker Benjamin Tarver, who was instrumental in recovering the negatives, talks of the three boxes being handed to him by their unwitting custodian in a plastic bag.

According to the website of the International Center of Photography, established by Robert Capa’s brother Cornell and the current custodians of the negatives: "As far as we understand, Capa left all his negatives in his Paris studio at 37 rue Froidevaux, under the supervision of his darkroom manager and fellow photographer Imre 'Csiki' Weiss (1911–2006). In a letter dated July 5, 1975, Weiss recalled, 'In 1939, when the Germans approached Paris, I put all Bob's negatives in a rucksack [my italics, RO] and bicycled it to Bordeaux to try to get it on a ship to Mexico. I met a Chilean in the street and asked him to take my film packages to his consulate for safekeeping."

So, at the time they vanished, the boxes were in a rucksack, likely a French one at that.

Moreover, in a FAQ section of its Mexican Suitcase website, the ICP says: "The Mexican Suitcase is the name given to three boxes of negatives found in Mexico City containing negatives of the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa, Chim (David Seymour), and Gerda Taro."

While the three boxes collectively are known as The Mexican Suitcase, there is no actual, physical, single suitcase. The phrase is a metaphor—if that’s the right word.

That said, as a marketing concept and collective noun, it is superb. It is evocative, exotic, mysterious, and is suggestive of the journey of the negatives.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Herman]

Wang Qingsong and other Chinese photographers were featured in a Photo Festival Naarden in Holland.
See, "Visit to FotoFestival Naarden 2001", at www.efn.org/~hkrieger/fotofest.htm

[Rob Atkins]

Interesting. Thank you for the assessment Roger.

What we need in North America is Les Rencontres de Waukesha.

[Steve Greenwood]

Pity about the Mexican Suitcase show. I saw the show at ICP in New York, and it was excellently presented there - facsinating. And yes, there was a 'suitcase' - a cardboard case full of rolls of (substitute - the originals are too precious) negatives.

[Tom V]

I saw "The Mexican Suitcase" and Wang Qingsong "When Worlds Collide" at the Photography Center in NY City this April. Both very impressive.

I thought it strange though that the giant Wang Qingsong prints were tacked onto the wall with push pins. I wonder if someone is going to take home some very used and abused (but quite impressive) prints when the exhibit is over. Wang is an artist with a capital "A".

For "The Mexican Suitcase" the suitcase (a cheap brown one) was on display with handmade eggcrate dividers to hold the individual rolls of film. So yes, there was a suitcase.

-Tom-

[John Yuda]

It's too bad about The Mexican Suitcase. I saw the exhibit in New York in June and it was fantastic.

[Mike O'Donoghue]

This was one of the coolest venues as the Museum of Antiquities is air conditioned. Why heat the room with lamps?

I have one bone to pick and that's that the all-in ticket allows only one admission to each exhibit – no repeats (should one be interested).

The exhibit was interesting – you saw what use was made of the pictures taken by the three photographers, Capa, Seymour, and Taro.

For photo fans a great way to spend a few days wandering through the town and environs – catching glimpses or talking with the many festival guests (wearing their bright orange plastic badges on lanyards).

Got my free portrait taken with the Olympus Pen next to the town square and the next day went to the product presentation. All very swell.

[Scott Lightner]

From Wang's site: "This image is printed onto a whole roll of Kodak paper. Actually I don’t care about history. I am only interested in the extreme length of a photoe. If there is a 100-meter-long photo paper, I will be able to put in a lot more “valuable” stuff and create a 100-meter long photo. " (sic)

At a big show in Los Angeles earlier in the year I asked a gallery owner what he thought about all the new Chinese works. He said, much of it seemed to be about trying to make a big splash, with not much substance behind the work.

[Mike Johnston]

"At a big show in Los Angeles earlier in the year I asked a gallery owner what he thought about all the new Chinese works. He said, much of it seemed to be about trying to make a big splash, with not much substance behind the work."

If there's anything I have a stereotyped knee-jerk reaction against, it's the knee-jerk stereotyping of peoples' art based on some vague generalized disapprobation by someone else....

[g]

Can I at least suggest you see it for yourself before dismissing it?

Mike

[Mike Johnston]

"What we need in North America is Les Rencontres de Waukesha."

You laugh, but Waukesha actually wouldn't be a bad venue for such a thing. We have a compact, dense downtown that's well suited to sidewalk fairs, open country on three sides, a large fairgrounds, and our own airport. And we're twenty minutes from the largest city in the region (Milwaukee) and less than two hours from Chicago's O'Hare.

Mike

[Andre Moreau]

"Waukesha actually wouldn't be a bad venue for such a thing"

In 1970, a photographer, a writer and an historian founded the "Rencontres d'Arles".

Now, who in Waukesha would be both a photographer, a writer and possibly an historian...

[Mike Johnston]

Andre,
An interesting but purely hypothetical question--would you prefer that I start a festival and close TOP, or continue TOP and not start a festival? I'm assuming I couldn't do both....

Mike

[Scott Lightner]

I've noticed the same thing myself, Mike. (My own opinion, and perception). Lots of flash, and sensation, but not much depth. But these are usually conceptual images, as is Wang's image.

Wang seems to support this in his own words:

From Wang's site: "This image is printed onto a whole roll of Kodak paper. Actually I don’t care about history. I am only interested in the extreme length of a photoe. If there is a 100-meter-long photo paper, I will be able to put in a lot more “valuable” stuff and create a 100-meter long photo. " (sic)

[David Dyer-Bennet]

As someone who holds down a day job, follows and comments on rather too many online forums and email lists, takes photographs, and has on occasion worked on as many as three science fiction conventions at once (including being chairman, on the executive committee, or being treasurer now and again), I'm not nearly as sure of the "can be only one" thing as you seem to be.

But if you don't want to start the festival, don't let people push you into it. (I have no real idea what the chances of making such a thing work are, anyway.)

[Ricky Frystak]

(Not) coincidentally, Aperture is releasing a fat 456-page book in September of the NYT Magazine photographs.

[Till Schramm]

Great review of the opening week. As always, it was too much to take in this years edition. I like the notion of 6 festivals happening at the same time.

It was also my impression that people were impressed by the Salgado prints. I was told that it is one guy, in London I suppose, who is applying a certain kind of bleaching technique while printing.

Anyway. I wasn't too much impressed by the prints. In my opinion it was overdone. Kind of like the clarity slider in the digital darkroom. Impressive yes, but not my kind of style.

I agree on your critique regarding the Mexican Suitcase Show. But I did endure the guided tour with Cynthia Young. It was overrun, but after more and more people dropped out, it turned out very intimate and informative.

If you are knowledgeable of some German and interested in my opinion of this years Rencontres I invite you to visit my blog over at http://www.mittleresgrau.de/veranstaltung/ein-rueckblick-auf-das-rencontres-darles-2011-foto-fesitval/article706/ .

Greetings from Germany
Till

[Ken Croft]

Hey I just saw on a site called dpreview, a review of some photo manipulating software for the ipad, see it here http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/snapseed/
I really do think Ctein is not looking at all well. What have you been doing to himM