For its ninth edition, taking place in Sète from May 24th to June 11th , ImageSingulières settled in new locations: the Entrepôts Larosa. La France vue d’ici, the national photographic commission La jeunesse en France(Youth in France), a residency awarded to Anne Rearick, François Kollar, Thibaut Cuisset… A panorama of the programme with Gilles Favier, the festival’s artistic director.
This year ImageSingulières is devoted to France and its recent history. This proposal is in no way restrictive, it is our firm will to make an inventory of the places in our country. We will be in strongly political and uncertain times, between the presidential and legislative elections, and we will not avoid any necessary discussion about our proposals.
A residency, the festival’s usual highlight, has been entrusted to the photographer Anne Rearick, originally from Boston. Her work, in direct line of the American humanist photography will be the subject of a book, the tenth in the Sète # collection.
The participatory project La France vue d’ici that we have been leading for the last three years and that has involved about thirty photographers and journalists is now at an end. The result is impressive, the points of view, the approaches come together for a passionate portrait of our country. We are showing it in its entirety for the first time in an impressive exhibition of several hundred photographs. A book published by La Martinière and a film featuring François Morel’s voice accompany the project.
The public commission from the Ministry of Culture Jeunes – Générations that we have steered together with CNAP will also be a linchpin of our program with a book and an exhibition of the commissioned fifteen projects.
One theme “Paysans”, with the documentary Les Inconnus de la terre by Mario Ruspoli, the black and white portraits by Denis Dailleux, the moving Face au silence by Christophe Agou and Saisons noires by Julien Coquentin. François Kollar’s La France travaille also has a place of honour with the help of the Roger Viollet agency at the Maison de l’Image Documentaire. Pascal Dolémieux, a precocious and talented photographer from the 1980s, returns to the stage with what are certainly his classics, but also his more recent colour images, the Théâtre de la Mer.
Thibaut Cuisset, with La rue de Paris, a book published in 2004, had departed from his usual tracks. He had used his talent to document this artery that irrigates Montreuil. We are paying him a tribute at the Maison de l’Image Documentaire.
We will be making an innovation this year with workshops open to the public and especially, a permanent place for discussion, the AgoraSingulière, which will allow photographers, collectives and institutions to present their activities in a space set up for the occasion.
In discovering the multiplicity of origins of those who make the county’s heart beat, the workers, and particularly the miners, Paul Valéry, from Sète wrote, in 1932, in a preface to La France travaille: “The earth of France is as diverse as the people who inhabit it”. This sentence could symbolise ImageSingulières as we would like it, tolerant and open to the world.
Gilles Favier, Artistic Director of ImageSingulières
Ninth edition of ImageSingulières
From 24th May to 11th June 2017
Various location in the city of Sète
France
