57th Rencontres de la photographie in Arles opens, focusing on memory and its unreliability

At this year's Rencontres de la photographie in Arles, over 40 exhibitions focus heavily on memory. You can't always trust it.

Published: July 29, 2026, 1:41 PM

"A photo of the horizon in Martinique I", 2025. Photo: Jordan Beal, Courtesy of the artist

By Maxi Broecking

The heat shimmers on the bright stones of the Place de la Republique. It is the hottest day of the year so far when the 57th "Rencontres" open in Arles, southern France, the internationally significant festival for photography. Behind a gate, across the courtyard, a narrow staircase leads up. Here, almost hidden, lies an entrance to the former monastery and current Cathedral of St. Trophime. At the top of the stairs, you reach the medieval cloister of the Benedictine monks from the 12th century. Another staircase leads to the upper floors and onto the roof, from which the church towers of the picturesque old town are visible — but also the dilapidated residential towers of the suburb, where many immigrants from the Maghreb live.

The monastery is one of the exhibition venues of the large photo meeting. It was founded in 1970 by French photographer Lucien Clergue in the small but historic Provencal town to strengthen photography as an art form. The more than forty exhibitions are spread across various locations in Arles, in churches, catacombs, small shops, and the Monoprix supermarket near the train station.

Behind the old monastery walls of St. Trophime, vertical light boxes in the shape of church windows now stand on the first floor. Inside, colors flow into each other, forming darkening surfaces and lines. They come from the artist, biochemist, and doctor Lara Tabet, born in 1983 in Lebanon and now living in Marseille. These are photographs created without a camera. Tabet processes ideas here about the "hydrofeminism" of Canadian cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis — that human bodies are fluid and materially connected to the environment through water cycles.

For this, Tabet took water samples from the Mediterranean Sea — from its ports, industrial plants, escape routes — cultivated the existing bacterial cultures in a Petri dish, and then applied them to film material. Through the continuous bacterial decomposition of the applied emulsion, those organic color patterns emerge. They make visible how ecologically precarious the sea is as a habitat today, but also how the political grievances of the Mediterranean region leave their traces in the water.

Lara Tabet applied water samples to film material for "Vitreous Body, Arenc Méditerranées Train Station", 2026. Photo: Lara Tabet; Courtesy the artist and BMW Art Makers

The New Ghana in 1957

In the town hall, right next to St. Trophime, the exhibition "Ghana! Dreaming of Independence" shows historical photographs from 1957. The year Ghana gained independence as the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa. A spirit of optimism and a will for progress speak from these images. Self-confident young women are portrayed as thinkers, scientists, and decision-makers of the new Ghana.

For this, curator Damarice Amao, head of the photographic department at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, invited contemporary Ghanaian artists to engage with this early period of independence. Gentle, beautiful works have emerged. In the restaged photograph by Carlos Idun-Tawiah "Many Reasons to Live Again" (2022), which is also the cover image for this year's Rencontres, the radiantly happy face of a young man on a bicycle appears in faded colors. Full of optimism, he seems to be riding into a future that today is only an obsolete utopia.

The Photo Festival

"Arles 2026. World in View" — Les Rencontres de la photographie, Arles (France), until October 4