The eighth edition of the ImageSingulières festival kicked off in Sète with some dozen events. Organized by the festival team and volunteers, it accompanies photography professionals during the inaugural days and opens its doors to Sète residents.
While each exhibition has its specificity, the line-up as a whole is not varied enough to warrant a detailed inventory. The strength and the uniqueness of the festival lie in the way it brings together documentary photography.
Just as Ettore Scola bore witness, in his La gente di Roma, to a facet of Romani population at a time of upsurge of territorial identification in a socio-economic context, Samuel Bollendorf and Mehdi Ahoudig chronicle majorette parades in the North of France—a sort of modern, working-class fairy tales.
Same place, fresh discovery: slow, long-term, and, in the words of Flavio Tarquinio, “patient” work that started with a couple he encountered at a bistro back in the 1980s. They took hold of the photographer the way one takes hold of a camera, and became the stage directors of their own dreams.
We also find a joint exhibition by two major figures in photography, Alberto Garcia-Alix and Anders Petersen who show images created during their FIFV (Festival Internacional Fotografía Valparaiso) residency in Chile.
Guillaume Herbaut’s exhibition Ukraine, from Chernobyl to the War is installed at the Regional Contemporary Art Center (CRAC) and features powerful, well-structured images of undeniable excellence.
The quality of the exhibitions is constant and homogeneous. However, the viewer oscillates between good and very good. Each setting is well adapted to the photo essay: Christian Lutz’s absurd, melancholy Las Vegas glitz, shown at the outdoor amphitheater, Théâtre de la Mer, is exhibited in the dark, in illuminated display boxes imitating Sin City’s neon lights and the glitter of slot machines.
The Maison de l’Image Documentaire (MID) houses two contrasting exhibitions. The first is Prisons by Sébastien Van Malleghem, who overcame administrative hurdles to gain access to, and photograph, the deplorable conditions of Belgian penitentiaries. The other is a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek, and slightly old-fashioned portrait of Belgian blue bloods who surrender their aristocratic personality, and sometimes even privacy, to Rip Hopkin’s camera. The series constructs as much as it deconstructs class stereotypes.
Very recent themes are few and far between, with the exception, among others, of four Chilean photographers—Nicolas Wormull, Cristóbal Olivares, Paula López-Droguett, and Tomás Quiroga—who participated in a good old residency program. In contrast to the nocturnal interiors by last year’s photographer-in-residence, Bieke Depoorter, they combine portraits of local residents, street corners, and landscapes photographed so many times, it’s impossible not to lump them together.
While the photographed subjects did not go on to live happily ever after and have lots of children, perhaps hope, generated by a coming together of photographers, was able to transform them, if only for a moment, into the protagonists of a story as painful and violent as their own reality. So thanks to the photographers for making us want to see again and again these photo essays, so full of hope.
FESTIVAL
ImageSingulières 2016
From 4 to 22 May, 2016
34200 Sète
France
http://www.imagesingulieres.com
