Panels: the Nonante-Neuf Talks

3-6.7.2018
Rencontres d’Arles

Panel #1: Exhibitions, books, digital formats: Extended spaces for contemporary photography

Printing and exhibition are not the only preferred formats of photography. Many photographers today consider the book as the principal and most appropriate form of a project whose exhibition is sometimes an alternative to or an extension of an existing work. At the same time, as the technological performances of screens and digital platforms are rapidly increasing, artists and publishers are truly beginning to invest in digital spaces.

Four photographers will discuss their recent projects, displayed in diverse formats (exhibition, book, digital media), and the implications of these formats for their practice and for the dissemination of their works.

With Delphine Bedel, Cristina de Middel, Anne Golaz, Salvatore Vitale

Panel #2: Picturing communities: Narratives between history, critical documentary and utopia

From the outset, photography has served to document communities, far or near, from perspectives as diverse as social criticism, anthropological observation, or the fascination of the Other. Some of these representations have profoundly shaped the surrounding collective imagination.

Two photographers and two historians of photography will discuss community photography in the 20th and 21st centuries and its challenges: current social criticism and its impact; the relationship with enchantment and disenchantment; the multiple forms of community photography and the personal, even fictional, dimension of documentaries; the influence of the major works of the 20th century.

With Martin Gasser, Laura Henno, Lucas Olivet, Maude Oswald

Panel #3: Writing on photography: New formats and disseminations

Art criticism, and with it photography, is experiencing both a proliferation, thanks to the numerous platforms that enable diverse publication formats, and a relatively difficult period, linked to the more general crisis of traditional media.

A photographer, several art critics, and the founders of writing platforms will discuss the current stakes of criticism: is it undergoing a golden age by virtue of the multiplication of distribution platforms? Is it becoming a niche, reserved for an increasingly specialized audience? Are new forms of writing, but also of exchanges with photographers and their audience, emerging with these forms? What are their business models? What are their impacts on photographers and the dissemination of their work?

With Federica Chiocchetti, Tim Clark, Matthieu Gafsou, Nadine Wietlisbach

Panel #4: Archival matters: Writing, reframing, and reclaiming history

Photography involves an extensive institutional and official dimension, which is voluntarily invisible, sometimes even secret. From identity portraits to forensic photography, from police archives to those of urban planning departments, important image corpuses shape a certain image and history of a society.

Three photographers, a specialist in archival law, and a historian of graphic design, whose works cover historical moments extend across half a century, from France in 1968 to the contemporary Turkish regime, including the Swiss uprisings of the 1970s and 1980s, will address the circulation of images, signs and symbols, as well as the interpretation of history made possible by their contemporary appropriation and reframing.

With Christoph Draeger, Tatiana Pavliucenco, Miklós Klaus Rózsa, Furkan Temir, Michel Wlassikoff