Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie
Monday, 2 July 2012 - Sunday, 23 September 2012
Arles | France
Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie
Ten years, twenty years, thirty years is the time it takes for the talents of the photographers, historians, and curators trained at the École Nationale Supérieure de Photographie (ENSP) to develop.
The school was founded in Arles in 1982 and was the brainchild of Lucien Clergue, Jean-Maurice Rouquette, the founders of the Rencontres, and Alain Desvergnes. Desvergnes was an important director of this festival, then of the school, which he planned to the last detail with the help of his wife, Marie-Annick Lenoir. The little sister of the Rencontres was a beneficiary of the money devoted to culture by François Mitterrand and Jack Lang, when the Socialists came to power in 1981.
Maryse and Antoine Cordesse, staunch and benevolent supporters of photography at Arles, were a decisive influence. Thanks to Michel Vauzelle, the President’s spokesman and Gaston Deferre, Minister of the Interior and Decentralisation, they arranged for ENSP to become one of the French President’s ‘grand projects’, along with the refurbishment of the Louvre, the Finance Ministry at Bercy, the new Opéra Bastille, the National Library, and the Arch at La Défense.
It was the smallest and the least expensive of the ‘grand projects’. The time has come to see how it is getting on. The 2012 edition of the Rencontres is entirely devoted to it.
François Hébel, director of the Rencontres d’Arles.
