{"id":1692597,"date":"2026-09-15T10:25:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T14:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1692597"},"modified":"2026-09-15T10:28:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T14:28:28","slug":"art-rencontres-darles-photography-festival-review-luma-bustamante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/09\/art-rencontres-darles-photography-festival-review-luma-bustamante\/","title":{"rendered":"In Arles, Photography and Art Ease the Transition from Summer into Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Harry Gruyaert, Carnival, Antwerp, Belgium<\/em>, 1992. \u00a9 HARRY GRUYAERT\/MAGNUM PHOTOS, Courtesy of the artist and Gallery FIFTY ONE, Antwerp<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Arles, in France’s Camargue region, has been swelling in reputation since Maja Hoffmann’s art campus\u2014featuring a jagged Frank Gehry-designed tower clad in shimmering stainless steel panels\u2014rose over the horizon line. The city has a much longer artistic heritage than that, with Arles Amphitheatre (completed in 90 AD) among the UNESCO World Heritage Site-listed attractions. The Rencontres d’Arles<\/a> photography festival first brought art fervor to the city over 50 years ago, presenting a global array of photographic practices every summer into early fall since its foundation in 1970. This year, through October 4, some 40 exhibitions are on in venues as diverse as 19th-century industrial buildings and the upper floor of Monoprix (loosely the French version of Target). This array takes the temperature of contemporary photography thematically, formally and politically.<\/p>\n

Three exhibitions stand out. At Palais de L’archev\u00each\u00e9, “Ghana! Dreaming Independence 1957-1976<\/a>” examines how the country championed optimism after more than a century under British colonial rule. Beyond reframing its infrastructure, it forged a new liberated cultural identity through the visual arts, flourishing from brochures to postcards to stamps to textiles. These helped dismantle colonial-era racist imagery across photography books and print culture, notably in such tomes as Ghana: An African Portrait<\/i> (1976) by Paul Strand or The Roadmakers<\/i> (1961) by American photographer Willis E. Bell and Ghanaian playwright Efua Sutherland. The former, taken with a view camera in the 1960s, focuses on traditional signifiers (which were later printed widely on banknotes); the latter’s well-designed layout and photojournalist style, captured with a medium-format camera, ushered in modern representation. Outside of such publications, the featured mid-20th-century portraits by James Barnor are especially beautiful, while Carlos Idun Tawiah’s contemporary scenes in Accra showcase the ongoing legacy and vibrancy of Ghana’s denizens.<\/p>\n

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