In 2009, the Rencontres de la photographie in Arles revealed the world of David Armstrong to the Arles public in an exhibition held at the Parc des Ateliers, curated by Nan Goldin, then guest artistic director. Fifteen years later, his work returns to Arles for this new exhibition presented by LUMA Arles.
More than a simple portraitist, Armstrong, who passed away in 2014, captured the essence of a generation and a certain attitude toward life, immortalizing them in a series of images as intimate as they are striking.
From the very beginning, Armstrong focused on photographing his era and those close to him.
In the 1970s, while studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he evolved alongside artists such as Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, Taboo!, and Jack Pierson, forming an avant-garde art scene. His early black-and-white photographs portray a youth that was both introspective and rebellious, embodying a fragile and magnetic form of freedom. His work is a true historical document, an archive that exudes beauty, that of a New York that no longer exists. New York as an attitude, beyond the Empire State Building, the postcards, and the countless film scenes shot in its slumped streets or its giant billboards. His New York is a promise, a haven for the disenfranchised, for artists, poets, musicians, and bohemians of all kinds.
The exhibition shows how, from the very beginning, Armstrong portrayed not just people, but a posture toward life and its troubles an attitude that was intoxicated and exuberant, yet disenchanted and idle. These portraits are still striking today for their frankness: unfiltered, undeceived, these men and women faced the camera with a seductive and free eye.
The vaporous landscapes form a counterpoint to these portraits; they are much more timeless.
Armstrong immortalizes places he explored during the twists and turns of his life, panoramas he seems to capture on the fly. He created them in the late 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
They must be viewed through the prism of this immense tragedy: they are memento mori. These works remind us of the transience of existence.
Through this major exhibition, LUMA Arles once again celebrates David Armstrong’s singular vision, his melancholic aesthetic, and his lasting influence on contemporary photography. An immersion into the work of an artist who, far beyond portraiture, was able to translate an era and a state of mind onto glossy paper.
David Armstrong
07.05..25 — Spring 2026
La Tour, Underground, Niveau -3
Arles 2025 : Disobedient Images
56th edition is from july 7 to october 5.
Opening week is from july 7 to 13.
https://www.rencontres-arles.com/en
https://www.rencontres-arles.com/en/expositions
https://billetterie.rencontres-arles.com/prestation/Expositions.html?process=2#
