Arles, les Rencontres de la photographie une histoire française (Arles, the "Rencontres de la photographie" a French history)

From the meetings between a small group of photographers in 1970 to a million visits in 2018, it is a whole saga of photography that is inscribed on the land of Arles. Originally, Lucien Clergue, photographer, Jean-Maurice Rouquette, curator, Michel Tournier, writer, militate for the recognition of photography, choose the festival to be heard. It was not without fights, broncas and parties until the end of the night. From the most famous photographers (Ansel Adams, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Don McCullin, Gisèle Freund, André Kertész, Josef Koudelka, Sergio Larrain...) to the lesser known of the time (Sophie Calle, Thibaut Cuisset, Alain Fleischer, Gao Bo, Nan Goldin, Françoise Huguier, Annette Messager, Martin Parr, Sophie Ristelhueber. ...), which would then join the walls of museums, the Rencontres de la photographie have accompanied many journeys, opened their program to other continents, and spread their exhibitions and their know-how to China. To find the thread of fifty years of history through a multi-study of exhibitions, screenings, conferences, prizes, workshops ... the historian Françoise Denoyelle has consulted the archives, interviewed many witnesses. A return on a history of women and men, on the emergence of new generations, new views, new practices, new relationships to the production of images of the 1980s and 2000s until today, when the silver gave way to digital before the era of the smartphone. 5 interviews punctuate this history, with the testimony of Jean-Maurice Rouquette, Christian Caujolle, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Clément Chéroux, Sam Stourdzé. Each brings his or her point of view on key moments and aspects of the festival. A magnificent breath of fresh air, in 13 previously unpublished photographs, Bernard Plossu's Arles stroll tells of another Arles, that of the Arlesians, another festival, that of moments reserved for the stroller on the banks of the Rhone, for the festival-goer in search of a saving freshness on the dusty road to the Beauduc beach.