A R L E S.
The other day I tried to read some of the "intelligent"
press about
Les rencontres photographiques d'Arles. From articles like this it is difficult to get any kind of feeling for what Arles is actually about, save 28°C in the shade and a lot of photography exhibitions. Michel Guerrin et Claire Guillot finally put down some of their more interesting thoughts in a
longer article published in Le Monde 13/07/06, and here we might take up one or two points. Guerrin and Guillot begin their article with observation that Depardon, art director of this year's festival, has spent 30 years of professional life reacting to the question
Pourquoi tu ne fais pas du Cartier-Bresson ou du Doisneau ? One can perhaps understand Depardon's point of view, if this truly is the case. Looking in from the ouside, I feel fairly unconvinced. I don't understand why someone of Depardon's stature who works at an international level, and has received international recognition, should feel plagued by the cultural influence a couple of his own country's photographic icons. What would surely be worse would be to criticise Depardon for having
fait que du Cartier-Bresson ou du Doisneau. Happily that is not the case.
It is impossible to do justice to such a festival in but a handful of lines, also given that we spent a mere weekend doing a whistle-stop tour. Here therefore are a few critical highlights and reflections. My highlights : clearly Anders Petersen, Michael Ackerman, David Goldblatt, Antoine Agoudjian, Lorenzo Castore, Malik Nejmi, Lise Sarfati and finally, the
American Photography in French Collections exhibition.
Anders Petersen's exhibition is brutal and direct. The prints are of different sizes, the hanging is simple. The blacks are dark, the highlights burn out in intense
chiaroscuro. The sense that comes across first and foremost is the interaction which takes place between photographer and subjet (
photographe et photographié) to make each image, which is almost ripped out of time and then thrust into timelessness by the rage of the photographer. We talked a great deal with Guillaume Lebrun (exhibited in
Clicks and Classes) about this directness, and the importance of the photographer's presence to stimulate the possibility of the
prise de vue. There is an enormous humanity in these photographs, and I find myself asking the question, what kind of world does Anders Petersen inhabit to bring back such visions? The answer is, of course, that it is the same world, my world, your world… Here however, the photographer transforms the world by his presence. In this he is an artist, and his photography clearly an art.
The work of Michael Ackerman possesses something of the same rage. However, at least in the first room of prints, the photographer imposes a kind of distance upon our regard. The subject, a train journey through Poland, brings us into a series of empty landscapes in which the dirt from his train's window forms as much a part of the photographic frame. Journey in hell ? Journey of redemption ? One knows not. Ackerman's train clearly interposes a distance from which to observe this land, and yet there is nothing "filmic" in this series. We know Akerman's from
End time city, yet here, the fantoms belong not to ghosts of people hiding in the nooks and crannies of the walled city, but to the crucifixions of trees and telegraph poles which nail a ragged land to the frozen sub-soil beneath frozen feet.
The third exhibition in this triumverate is that of Antoine Agouodjian. Atom Egoyan begins Agoudjian's "
photo-poche" with the phrase :
here are some of the most powerful images that I have ever seen. Egoyan is not wrong. This exhibition, along with Petersen and Ackerman surely one of the highlights of the festival. If Ackerman's photos are framed by a train's window, here, the photographs are framed by geographical border: between the Euphrates and the Caspian from West to East, by the Koura in the North, and Iraq to the South. If it weren't for a western buttoned shirt or an occasional tank these photographs would be almost impossible to date. A reminder of where we are on the Eastern frontiers of
Europa. The portraits are more distant that those of Petersen's camera
intimement sauvage. Here, we are brought to experience a different kind of intimacy. Take the photograph "
réunion entre amis" in which two men and two women spend the evening together. One man stands with eyes almost closed, drawing on a kind of pipe or microphone (it is impossible for me to tell which), the woman seated in front left looks upwards as thought towards a wall-mounted television, whilst her neighbour's eyes are masked by her right hand, she looks down as though in grief. The second man looks aross the space of the photograph, several bottles of beer arranged before him. Silence, multiple regards, this encounter is silent, and yet something indiscernable has brought these four people together.
Réunion entre amis, reminds the photographer's title. I will place a photocopy of this image next to a photo of Buzz Aldarin walking on the moon, just to remind myself of what I am inclined to call the central paradox of our time.
The director of the festival, François Hébel, made one rather curious comment at the end of the prize giving on Saturday evening, to the effect that this year's festival had brought
an end to the increasing anglo-saxonisation of Arles, its apogee occuring with Martin Parr's art direction two years ago. It seems to this writer that what is of greater cause for concern is the problem that contemporary French critics have with
anglo-saxon culture. What is important in Depardon's art direction is surely the balance he sought to establish between continental, east-european, american, african, and anglo-saxon photography. Let's be less
parochial.
