Rereading worlds at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2026

Greif Alumni and emerging practices at the 57th edition of the festival

The opening days of the 57th edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles have begun. Running under the theme “Des mondes à relire” (“Worlds to Reread”) and directed by Christoph Wiesner, the 2026 festival focuses on visual complexity, transmission, and nuanced representation in contemporary photography. A central point for emerging work is the Louis Roederer Discovery Award exhibitions at the Espace Monoprix. Among the featured artists are Charlotte Yonga and Souleymane Bachir Diaw. For us at Der Greif, their presence in Arles holds a distinct significance, as both artists are alumni of our platform. Seeing their practices evolve onto this global stage provides a concrete entry point into the festival's broader critical framework.

The festival’s prompt to reread the world is an explicit rejection of the fast-paced, highly consumed, and often flattened imagery that defines contemporary digital culture. To reread implies that a first reading is insufficient. It suggests that prevailing dominant narratives, whether shaped by colonial histories, Western-centric archival gaps, or algorithmic filters, require systematic deconstruction. Visual complexity, in this context, is not merely an aesthetic choice; it is a political and ethical necessity. When an image is too easily understood, it frequently relies on preexisting stereotypes or simplified tropes. By introducing ambiguity, layered references, and deliberate formal constraints, photographers compel the viewer to slow down. This shift alters the spectator from a passive consumer of information into an active participant in meaning-making.

The work of our alumni directly addresses this need for visual complexity by challenging how specific communities and identities are documented. In her series “(Tsy) Possible,” Yonga presents a collaborative approach to portraiture that disrupts the traditional, external gaze often directed at Madagascar. Working within the framework of fitiavana, a Malagasy concept encompassing love, kinship, and attachment to life, Yonga respects local codes of modesty. Her images do not aim for total exposure. Instead, by utilizing co-created stagings inspired by vernacular family photo albums and regional folklore, she builds layers that resist immediate consumption. The title itself, combining the Malagasy negation with the French possible, creates a linguistic and visual hybridity. It forces a rereading of youth in the Indian Ocean region, positioning them between ancestral traditions and modern aspirations without succumbing to exoticism.

Similarly, Diaw uses his project to investigate identity, masculinity, and cultural heritage, specifically focusing on the social constructions surrounding men. In works such as Sutura (the silent voice of men), Diaw employs specific textures, precise compositions, and traditional garments like the grand-bubu to manage what is revealed and what remains hidden. The visual complexity here lies in the tension between visibility and secrecy. By refusing to deliver a singular, easily digestible definition of contemporary African masculinity, Diaw requires the viewer to engage with the subtle nuances of performance, privacy, and heritage. Both alumni demonstrate that rewriting narratives requires an internal perspective grounded in mutual trust rather than detached observation.

In “CTRL,” a group exhibition curated by Nicolas Giraud and his class at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie analyzing the mechanics of the digital image itself. By deconstructing how technological alteration and algorithmic generation dictate what we perceive as ‘real,’ the artists expose the invisible power structures embedded in modern image-making tools. Concurrently, “L’image cannibale” ("The Cannibal Image"), curated by Alessandra Chiericato at the Chapelle de la Charité, addresses the medium through the lens of the 2024 Curatorial Research Fellowship, including our alumni Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen and Dune Varela. The group exhibition positions the photograph not as a passive mirror of reality, but as an active agent that shapes, and occasionally distorts, human perception. By featuring works that process, deconstruct, and re-frame the real, the exhibition argues that images have the capacity to consume our understanding of existence if left unexamined.

In a joint initiative to extend these critical frameworks into the public sphere, in collaboration with the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (MRO) Foundation, we are hosting an evening of collective looking and conversation: a screening community event today, July 10, from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. This gathering grounds the very questions of visual literacy and institutional representation explored by our alumni in the main program back into a collaborative space. The screening and gathering act as a horizontal application of the festival’s broader mandate, presenting works by international artists selected through our open call alongside the material outcomes of the "Read Against the Machine" editing workshop developed at MRO Foundation on July 8th. By bringing together diverse photographic practices from around the world, the screening echoes the defiant stances of Yonga and Diaw by prioritizing images that demand active interpretation rather than offering comfortable certainty, consciously embracing ambiguity, dialogue, and multiple entry points of seeing.

The screening features works by Amelie Sachs, Amir Rad, Anna Aicher, Anne Mocaër, Anya Tsaruk, Ariana Zukowski, Athul Prasad, Áron Tóth-Heyn, Bob Jones, Caroline Ruffault, Caroline Suzman, Chiara Capobianco, Ewelina Bialoszewska, Fabrizio Bilello, Flavia Piola, Francesco Giordano, Gui Christ, Hannah Cauhépé, Jesus Degollado, Joel Jimenez Jara, Josefine Rauch, Julia Briend, Kim Oppermann, Laetitia Vançon, Laura Anna Rossa, Laurie Broughton, Luciana L. Schütz, Ludovica Limido, Mariam Ghalim, Masoumeh BahramiGorji, Monique van de Wijdeven, Nadege Mazars, Nicolas Reinhart, Noa Perez, Olivia de Villaine, Raul Guillermo, Sara Giuliani, Scarlett Coten, Sofia Pratas Morais, Theresa Wißmann, Tim Gassauer & Manu Gruber, Vanessa Lucrezia Francia, Vedad Divovic, and ZDULSKY.