Photography Highlights From Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025
The French photo fair returns for its 56th edition, centered around the theme “Disobedient Images.”
Summary
- The 2025 edition of Les Recontres d’Arles is now on view in France through October 5.
- Centered around the theme “Disobedient Images,” this year’s festival features a packed lineup of exhibitions and events that explore the transformative power of photography.
It’s that time of the year again, when photographers from all around the world head to the south of France for Les Recontres d’Arles. Now on view through October 5, the 2025 festival is themed around “Disobedient Images,” looking to the medium as a means of resistance, testimony and social transformation.
Now in its 56th edition, this year’s programming places special emphasis on projects based in Brazil and Australia, with standout shows that explore identity, history and the power of visual narrative. Among them is Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction, a group exhibitions that revisits Brazilian Modernist photography through the pioneering lens of Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante. This São Paulo-based amateur club became fertile ground for radical experimentation, reshaping the arc of Brazil’s photographic landscape. Also on view is On Country, a constellation of works hailing from Australia that explore the cultural, spiritual and environmental ties between First Peoples’ communities and the land.
Additional highlights include the first European retrospective of Kwame Brathwaite, the iconic American photographer and activist behind the term “Black is Beautiful.” A key figure of the second Harlem Renaissance, Brathwaite’s lush portraits reimagined approaches to the Black body through a free, inventive capture. In The Light from Within, American photographer Todd Hido continues his exploration of psychological landscapes, lensing desolate houses, moody interiors and skeletal trees imbued with haunting, cinematic stillness. Elsewhere, Claudia Andujar’s In Place of Another reflects on the lesser-known aspects of the artist. Shaped by the trauma of war and exile, Andujar used photography to find connection and meaning in her adopted home of Brazil.
Other notable presentations include the emotional tour de force of Nan Goldin’s Stendhal Syndrome, Lost and Found by French duo Elsa & Johanna and Guilherme Cunha’s Retratistas do Morro.
For more information on the festival, check out Les Rencontres d’Arles’ website.
