Is Arles The World Capital Of Photography?

Recontres de Arles director Sam Stourdzé and Matthieu Humery, director of the Living Archives programme, discuss the increasing importance of France’s annual photography festival

“With more than 100,000 visitors to Recontres de Arles in 2016, more than one million entries to the shows and 40 exhibitions in 2017, Arles is truly the summer capital of photography,” says director Sam Stourdzé, as he sips his expresso outside the festival reception building.

The opening professional week of the event in southern France has just ended, and the figures prove him right: “We thought we’d reached the maximum last year with 15,000 visitors during the opening week, but we had 17,500 this year!” he smiles.

It’s a sign of the growing success of Recontres de Arles, a photographer festival founded in 1970 by local photographer Lucien Clergue, writer Michel Tournier and historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette. Today, it serves as a springboard for photography and contemporary creativity, and in recent years its guest curators have included the likes of Martin Parr in 2004, Raymond Depardon in 2006 and the Arles-born fashion designer Christian Lacroix.

Director Sam Stourdzé, 42, is seen as somewhat of a wonder kid within the niche world of photography curation. Previously the director of le Musée de l’Elysée, a museum of photography in Switzerland, he was appointed director and curator of Rencontres de Arles in 2014, replacing François Hébel, who had been curating it since its inception.

“It’s the 48th edition this year and my aim is not to change the foundations of the festival but to reinforce its spirit,” says Stourdzé. “Arles is the photographers’ grand festival; it has always been and always will be. There is also a small gust of impertinence we want to blow on photography, saying: ‘Let’s look at images in another way.’”

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