Reflecting the lasting collaboration between the Rencontres d’Arles and the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie and their shared support of young photographers, the festival has for several years now offered the opportunity to three ENSP graduates to exhibit their work within the festival’s official program.

This year’s jury, composed of Christoph Wiesner, Marta Gili, Nelly Monnier and Eric Tabuchi, has selected work by Jingyu Cao, Raphaël Lods and Iris Millot, for the relevance and diversity of their artistic approaches, reflecting the wealth of creative and conceptual methods of ENSP graduates.

Jingyu Cao is interested in the impact of media images, virtual and real. Her work explores political and social settings at the boundary between the virtual and the real. Her practice activates a continuous vigilance vis-à-vis the technologies shaping our perceptions of the world. For a Special Attention, she highlights a failure of the realities produced
through four projects from her work Somewhere in time.
Raphaël Lods has developed a body of research on utopias and their failures. With The Field of Birds [Le champ des oiseaux], he creates an archive of the buildings of his great-grandfather, Modernist architect Marcel Lods. While his works are gradually being demolished, abandoned or renovated, the photographer locates and catalogues them.
Iris Millot gathers evidence on the relationships human beings weave with their environments. She uses these materials to create tension around notions of inhabitability, transmission, and rootedness within shared histories. For this exhibition, she crosses the personal and social strata, that merge with the land that her great-aunt has inhabited and cultivated for forty years. An old farm, a women’s rights activist, dry wells, and one last season.


TRANSDISCIPLINARY STUDY WEEK WITH CITÉ ANTHROPOCÈNE
In February 2023, Cité Anthropocène in Lyon, with the support of SNCF Immobilier and the Rencontres d’Arles, conducted a transdisciplinary study on the Arles region, inviting all those who contribute to the festival to reflect on the impacts of climate change during a summer cultural event. A group of scientists, researchers, architects, and artists traveled through the Rhône river delta to better understand these complex issues, questioning practices and taking stock of the changes at play. The objective: to define new guidelines for the summer use of Ground Control, a railway site and exhibition space for the Rencontres d’Arles, which will host the exhibitions Grey Sun[Soleil Gris]; and Special Attention [Une attention particulière].