Chat gay arles
Resistance is febrile at this summer's Rencontres d’Arles
The title of this year’s Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in the south of France, Disobedient Images, was partly inspired by a feature in The Guardian newspaper. “We were thinking about what to contact it, and then we saw this incredible article,” says the festival’s director, Christophe Wiesner.
The article is about a database obtained by the Associated Urge that highlights the extent—and, often, the absurdity—of the wholesale deletion of thousands of images and online posts at the Pentagon as part of US President Donald Trump administration’s sweeping purge on anything remotely connected to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives). This included, according to The Guardian, removing the name of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945: the Enola Gay.
Wiesner was reminded of the cut-and-paste censorship of Soviet-era photo deception and, no disbelief, David King’s striking book The Commissar Vanishes (1997), in which we spot variations of the same images before and after they were doctored to remove officials who had fallen out of favour with Joseph Stalin. “One of the g
Stephen Shore and Martin Parr hang out at Arles
The two great Phaidon photographers enjoy signings and retrospectives at the world's greatest photo festival
What are these two great photographers talking about? Perhaps their respective Rencontres d’Arles retrospectives, which have both just opened at the amazing French photography festival or even their great body of Phaidon books.
Stephen Shore and Martin Parr chat during a signing session at the Rencontres d’Arles
Neither Stephen Shore nor Martin Parr are especially keen on going over their old material, though both have produced a body of work so successfully loved by photo fans around the world that it’s hard to dodge just a little nostalgia.
Stephen Shore discusses his perform with the critic Natasha Wolinski at the Rencontres d’Arles
We took these images of Stephen Shore and Martin Parr yesterday at a book signing on the city’s Rue du Docteur Fanton, close by both photographers’ shows. The book signing took place immediately after a terse exchange between Shore and the esteemed critic Natasha Wolinski.
Stephen Shore and Martin Parr at the Rencontres d'Arles
Shore is the subject of a festival