More than a festival : a manifesto
By taking on a subject that is both universal and under-exploited by visual arts, the Deauville Sport Images Festival establishes itself from its very first edition as a unique event. It’s not about riding the wave of the Olympic Games or flattering sponsors. It’s about looking at it differently. About seeing in pespiration, crowd, fall, victory something fundamentally human. And about giving sports imagery back what it has too often lost: its narrative power, its critical force, its ability to question the times. Deauville is not just welcoming a new festival. It is creating a new field of vision.
On the map of festivals devoted to photography, Deauville draws a singular line. From June 21 to September 21, 2025, the city will host the Deauville Sport Images Festival (DSIF), the first French event entirely dedicated to sports photography or rather, to what sport tells us about ourselves, our bodies, our societies, our conflicts, our hopes.
The ambition goes far beyond highlighting athletic gestures. The aim here is to explore a universal visual language, capable of revealing both geopolitical tensions and the most intimate emotions.
For three months, twelve open-air exhibitions will transform the city into an open-sky gallery. From the seafront to Les Planches, from the International Centre to the racecourse, Deauville becomes a playing field for photographers capturing effort, struggle, grace, defeat, and brotherhood.
Supported by the City of Deauville and the BITL agency, the festival follows a path that is both aesthetic and political. It intends to think of sport as a mirror of our time, far from stereotypical images and marketing codes.
For Agnès Vergez, its artistic director, “sport is a language everyone speaks. It embodies humanity, perseverance and fractures too. It tells stories, without words.”
The program is international, committed, and open. AFP plays a central role, with the exhibition A World of Sports, composed of 25 photographs from its offices around the globe: a soccer match high in the Andes at 6,000 meters, horsemen on the Mongolian steppes, a floating rugby field on a Swiss lake…
Three other series by the agency will complement this panorama: 20 Photos That Marked History, Best of 2024 an immersion into the visual backstage of the Paris Games and The Paralympic Feat, devoted to the evocative power of extraordinary bodies.
The official launch of the festival took place on June 21st during La Nuit du Sport, a grand evening of screenings and awards at the Deauville International Centre. Three prizes were awarded:
Photographer of the Year (Étienne Garnier / L’Équipe), Sports Reportage Prize (Violette Dorange by Bernard Le Bars / Signatures), and the Paralympic Photo Prize (Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP). A jury made up of members from partner editorial teams AFP, L’Équipe, Sports Illustrated, Paris Match honored the most striking work of the past fourteen months. More than a list of winners, this evening offered a platform to photographers and athletes who often share the same silent battles.
Another strong gesture of this first edition: its openness to image professionals, whether from agencies or from independent photographers. The selected series will join the summer displays, in a spirit of dialogue, confrontation, and hybrid viewpoints. The DSIF does not see itself as a fixed showcase, but as a moving, collaborative, evolving space.
Underlying it all, a certainty: sports imagery deserves better than its status as mere illustration. It is a form of journalism, sometimes poetry, often resistance. By pulling it out of scoreboards and social networks to bring it into the light of day, Deauville asserts that sport is not just another form of entertainment.
It is a revealer of the world, a stage without a set, an archive of our time. And photography—its most sensitive witness.
The Deauville Sport Images Festival does not simply celebrate sport. It tells the story, questions it, and creates a new field of vision. In short, it gives it back to us in all its complexity—social, aesthetic, political. A landmark debut.
Carole Schmitz
More information: www.indeauville.fr/festival/deauville-sport-images-festival
