A reflection on Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival

I attended Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in the south of France during it's opening week: 7th - 12th July. This is one of the largest photography festivals in the world and attracts a varied crowd both in terms of those actively participating, be that photographers exhibiting their work, publishers looking for the next new talent or those attending portfolio reviews hoping to be discovered as the next new talent. For many others visiting Les Roncontres it is to see a plethora of work from both familiar and unfamiliar names in the word of photography. During the opening week Arles becomes a town that is unable to hide from an onslaught of cameras; every time you turn a corner someone is photographing something. The festival and those attending became a spectacle - framed by the medium it is celebrating.

The image appears highly privileged at Les Rencontres. An image which is frequently detached from the context of it's making. It seems an image that relies on itself alone and without desire for much self-reflexivity.

Can we really put this much trust or emphasis in the image alone? Should we not expect some critical investigation of the who/why/where of it's making? I know that I expected this to be the case for a photography festival who states in its strap-line celebrating 40 year of its existence, that it is also a festival offering '40 years of disruption'. I wonder about this claim, as surely the act of disruption is also in its nature questioning the thing it is attempting to unsettle? Yet very little is questioned here.

The countless images depicting people's hardship and distress, displayed as prints on the exhibition walls and massively projected onto the external walls of the disused railway sheds in the Parc des Ateliers during what is called the 'Night of the Year' - are unsettling to me. I feel repeatedly bombard with snippets of people's lives that are divorced from reality of the situation they were made in. It feels as the most important matter here is the production and display of powerful images. But these powerful images, which many of them are without a doubt, seem presented as entertainment, designed to create an emotional response so brief and digestible that it can be quickly replaced by the next photograph in the production line of image consumption.

Not all the work at Les Rencontrs d'Arles left me feeling this way, much of the work curated by Nan Goldin, along with her own work on show, were notable exceptions; as was the insightful photographs of Eugene Richard's new colour work: The Blue Room, which thoughtfully details abandoned houses across America. Other work that stays in my mind is Paulo Nozolino's Far Cry and Michal Ackerman's Half Life, both of which were displayed as slideshows with sonic accompaniment.

Whilst I enjoyed Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival, I did leave wondering where I fit in this world - if at all.