Our eight favorite exhibitions at the Rencontres d'Arles

LeMonde

5 days ago

The Matinale list
Touching images exploring paternal absence, contemporary visions of Australia, raw photographs of the Neapolitan Mafia, street photography in Paris and New York, the early works of Brazilian photographer Claudia Andujar... Here are eight must-see exhibitions in Arles.
Raphaëlle Peria's journey through memory
Raphaëlle Peria was well acquainted with her father's old photographs, taken aboard a barge going up the Rhône canal when she was three years old. Yet, she could not find in those images the sensations that were etched into her memory. 30 years later, the artist meticulously scratched the photos with surgical tools, using the shreds of paper and materials like Plexiglas and copper paper to create an entirely new world – one that better matched her memories, where bushes became jungles and shadows concealed caves. This also allowed her to emphasize the presence and absence of the plane trees lining the Rhône, which were attacked by a fungus and appear now in her images as ghostly silhouettes. It is a highly successful journey between past, present and imagination.