Arles: One of the world’s most famous art festivals in Arles, France, returns to diversity this week as France heads to the right.
The Rencontres Festival, which runs until September 29, is spread over 27 squares in the ancient cobbled streets of the former Roman city of Provence and has been running since the 1970s.
This year’s theme is “down to earth” to see diversity without the usual caricatures surrounding minorities.
The Star exhibition marks the world first for American portrait artist Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015), whose work has appeared in magazines such as Life and Rolling Stone.
One of his famous images shows an Icelandic boy on a horse’s neck, drawing attention to the boy’s disability.
Mark “devoted a lot of time and attention to his protagonists, in some cases photographing them for years, creating close relationships with many people,” says curator Sophia Greiff.
For example, Mark is a small boy who follows funny moments with his drug-addicted children from years of living on the streets.
“What I’m trying to do is create an image that is universal … that cuts across cultural lines,” Mark once said.
Elsewhere at the festival, Spanish photographer Cristina de Middel presented a documentary and dream work about migrants from Mexico to the United States.
Ignoring traditional tropes surrounding migration, it presents the passage as a heroic epic of brave men and women making their way to a new life.
Festival director Christoph Wiesner, mixing documentary footage with staged and poetic imagery, “brings back the individuality of each individual and restores the level of humanity in the representation.”
He said the news was particularly important because of the rise in extreme health in France, which is currently in the midst of legislative elections.
“Because justice is so complicated, we cannot give up,” she said, noting the festival’s work on issues of feminism and anti-racism, including performances in local schools.
Other exhibits this year include “I’m So Happy You Came Here,” which features the works of 20 Japanese women artists.
Others called it the “baroque of everyday life” in India’s Punjab province with strange ceiling sculptures brought back by locals after working abroad, including footballs, tanks, airplanes and tigers.
French artist Sophie Calle presents her paintings and her response to blind understanding of the beauty of sight.
“Green is beautiful because I love it every time you tell me,” read one note from the bright green.
