Monday, July 12, 2010

Les Rencontres Arles Photography



Le Recontres Arles is a big festival. It is recommended that at least three days is needed to see all the exhibitions. I had a seven day pass, and it was still difficult to assimilate all the images. An image is not like a play or a dance piece, which takes 15 minutes to three hours. We can view hundreds of images in an hour, but we can only hold one image in our minds at a time. Well, at least I can only hold one image in my head at a time.  When you are going through 60 exhibitions, a multitude of books and slide presentations, it is like an animal being force fed.

I have been constipated in my own photography. I gorged myself at this visual feast, hoping that something inside will burst out of me. Will it be a golden egg or just shit? I do not know, but I want something to come out of this intake, anything. Regardless, I want to go in a new direction. Anxiously, I stuff more images through the openings in my eyes, I open my eyes wide.

I do not have a ticket today, thank goodness. It is an excuse to rest.

Like anything this big, some work is mind-blowing and some work is simply bad. Some work I can appreciate for its originality, but it is not aesthetically to my taste.
I am talking about anybodies reaction to any such a festival.

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My persona favorite exhibition is a retrospective of the Italian master Mario Giacomelli.  His imagery is graphic, high contrast, visceral. Another favorite of mine was the collection of film maker Marin Karmitz. He has work by Anders Peterson, Michael Ackerman, Roger Ballen, Doisneau amongst others. His collection is also of very strong visceral work as well.

On a more commercial note, I loved the work of Claude Gassian, a french photographer for music. He has shot so many great musicians like the Rolling Stones, Chet Baker, Oasis, Rod Stewart, the list goes on. He also had a slideshow in one of the evening presentations.

The great find for me was Paris based photographer Klavdij Sluban. His exhibition was based on this travels in Trans Siberia. His book won the European book publishers award. It was a very moody black and white world.

Except for Claude Gassian, I found that most of the work that really grabbed me was black and white and was strong stuff. Gassian's work was very dramatic too!

Besides the work that many of my friends would guess that I love, there was also very interesting work which was not photography in the way we usually think of it. For example, there was an exhibition called Shoot!, which is about how fun fair shooting galleries used to have a camera which would automatically take a portrait of someone when that person hits the bulls eye. This was a fascinating collection of famous people like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sarte amongst images of anonymous people.

From China, Zhang Dali, exhibited a piece of work called Second History. He went to research the images archives and found the original images that proved that a lot of the Chinese propaganda images had been collaged and doctored heavily. And it was amazing what could be accomplished way before the age of photoshop. I would not buy these images to put on my wall, but the work was truly intriguing.

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While more of a visual artist than a photographer, Leon Ferrari, made use of images to criticize the Roman Catholic church in Argentina as well as the Americans continual use of force. They hung his most famous piece, Western Christian Civilization, which is a Christ figure, crucified on a jet fighter, in the altar place of an old church. Controversial indeed.

There were activities in the evening, like slideshow screenings and prize givings. So there was little time to rest.

Recontres D'arles is similar to the Edinburgh Festival in that it has an alternative festival called Voies Off which I think is the image equivalent of the Fringe in Edinburgh. A lot of Voies Off happened in the African quarter of Arles and evening screenings there were often accompanied by music and food.

This was truly a great slice of photography. It was inspiring in the best work, intriguing in the challenging work and of course sleep inducing in the boring work. I do want to come back again.

And I was very fortunate that my friend Anna, recommended this boat on the canal to stay on. It is owned by a lovely Italian couple, Olga and Michele and is a short walk from the city centre. But in the summer heat, being on a canal really helps. However, one has to take shelter inside about 7pm because the mosquitoes come out in force at that time. Still, I would definitely stay here again.

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