BMW Presents Raphaëlle Peria And Fanny Robin's Poetic Photographic Journey At Les Rencontres D'Arles

Forbes

2 days ago

Raphaëlle Peria. Gathering the Whispers, 2025. Courtesy of the artist / BMW ART MAKERS. Courtesy of the artist / BMW ART MAKERS.
In a powerful convergence of memory, photography, and environmental reflection, French artist Raphaëlle Peria and curator Fanny Robin unveil their collaborative exhibition Traversée du fragment manquant ("Crossing the Missing Fragment") at the 56th edition of Les Rencontres d'Arles, one of the world's most prestigious photography festivals. Staged at the atmospheric Cloître Saint-Trophime–a 12th-century Romanesque cloister and UNESCO World Heritage Site–this exhibition is the winning project of the BMW ART MAKERS 2025 programme and marks the 15th year of BMW France's cultural partnership with the festival.
The result is an elegy in images: a poetic dialogue between past and present, childhood and adulthood, memory and loss–rendered through a deeply personal story with universal environmental implications.
Fanny Robin and Raphaëlle Peria, BMW ART MAKERS. Photograph by David Coulon (2025). DavidCoulon (2025)/ BMW Art Makers
A Fragment Reconstructed
The exhibition began with a photograph–several, in fact. Raphaëlle Peria, only three years old at the time, embarked on a journey with her father and sisters along the Canal du Midi aboard their family barge. That memory was hazy, half-lost–until a family photo album resurfaced decades later. "Page after page, the story of this crossing unfolded," she says. That rediscovery became the catalyst for a multi-layered project combining old family photographs, newly shot images of the same canal, and Peria's own signature techniques of photographic transformation.
But there is a darker undertone. The plane trees that line the historic canal, once captured in the glow of childhood and sunlight, are now dying—devastated by an invasive fungal disease known as canker stain . 'There are parts of the canal now with no trees at all,' Peria says. 'In ten years, they'll be gone.'
Lever les voiles sur le passé Raphaëlle Peria - BMW ART MAKERS Raphaëlle Peria - BMW ART MAKERS
Photography As Archaeology
Curated by Fanny Robin, the exhibition is an ambitious feat considering the rapid timeline: from selection in December 2024 to full production and installation by May 2025.
Robin, Artistic Director of Lyon's Bullukian Foundation, has worked with Peria on multiple projects over nearly a decade, but this exhibition marks a turning point. 'This is our fifth exhibition together,' she says, 'but it's much more experimental than anything we've done before.'
The body of work displayed in Traversée du fragment manquant is structured around a dialogue—between Peria's own photographs, captured during a return journey to the canal this spring, and her father's archival images from the 1970s. Peria explains, 'There are three types of works in the show: my scratched photographic prints on paper, new works on plexiglass, and archival family photos scratched into copper-toned paper. I chose copper because the fungus that kills the trees leaves behind a copper stain on their bark.'
This act of scratching—an almost archaeological gesture—serves to reveal and conceal at once. In Peria's hands, photography is not merely a process of documentation, but a tactile excavation of memory, decay, and disappearance. The scratch marks, delicate yet insistent, reflect the tension between time's erosive nature and the human desire to preserve.
A Journey Through Scenography
At the heart of the exhibition is a stunning immersive installation, designed by Robin in close collaboration with Peria. Constructed from wooden structures and double-sided panels, the scenography invites visitors to move through the space as though navigating the narrow corridors of a barge. On one side are Peria's modern-day images; on the other, her father's archival photos—each one scratched, sculpted, and recontextualized into new meaning.
'It's a dialogue of transparency between past and present,' Peria explains.
The setting enhances the work's emotional gravity. The Cloître Saint-Trophime envelops viewers in ancient stone and filtered light, a living monument to time's passage. Robin and Peria's construction mirrors that experience, with framed images glowing subtly through semi-translucent supports, evoking the canal's reflective waters and the memory-traces of a vanishing ecosystem.
Robin notes that while the work will be shown at Paris Photo later this year, the scenography will shift. 'It will be adapted to the Grand Palais and its light,' she says. 'But the emotional core remains the same.'
BMW ART MAKERS exhibition "Traversée du fragment manquant" at Les Rencontres d'Arles 2025 by artist Raphaëlle Peria and curator Fanny Robin. © Raphaëlle Peria/BMW ART MAKERS (07/2025)
Memory, Melancholy, and Urgency
Beyond the technical and curatorial achievements, what truly defines Traversée du fragment manquant is its emotional resonance. The title itself hints at absence—the missing fragment that Peria seeks to reconstruct not only through image, but through sensation and memory.
The photographs bear poetic titles— Le Reflet de ce qu'il reste ( The Reflection of What Remains ), Gathering the Whispers —underscoring the elegiac tone. These are not just images of a canal; they are meditations on how landscapes carry human histories, how childhood moments become mythologized, and how fragile our ties to nature really are.
'I think it's important to show the evolution of an ecosystem,' Peria says. 'The trees are like ghosts now.'
The urgency of climate change and environmental degradation is never stated explicitly—but it haunts every image. In revisiting the route of her childhood voyage, Peria finds the trees she once remembered reduced to stumps, scars, and absence. In bringing them back through her art, she creates a powerful tribute to what is already lost and what may soon vanish.
Les fantômes du canal, Raphaëlle Peria - BMW ART MAKERS (2025) Raphaëlle Peria - BMW ART MAKERS (2025)
The Power of Partnership
BMW ART MAKERS, the program that brought this collaboration to life, is unique in that it funds a curator-artist duo, rather than a single artist. It's a model that fosters deep artistic dialogue, something both Peria and Robin have clearly embraced.
'The BMW program gave us the chance to take risks,' Robin says. 'It was a very short timeline, but that urgency led to something much more alive and immediate.'
BMW's 15-year partnership with Les Rencontres d'Arles represents a long-standing commitment to cultural support, but Traversée du fragment manquant feels particularly timely. As industries reckon with their role in environmental crises, supporting work that speaks directly to issues of memory and ecology feels less like branding and more like responsibility.
Raphaëlle Peria, BMW ART MAKERS (2025). Photograph by Lee Sharrock © Lee Sharrock
A Family's Silent Witness
As for Peria's father–whose photographs sparked the entire project–he had not yet seen the exhibition at the time of our interview. 'He found out about it in the newspaper,' Peria laughs. 'He'll come at the end of August.'
One imagines that the experience will be profound. His casual snapshots have now become a visual cornerstone of an exhibition that combines intimate family history with urgent environmental commentary. What began as a child's summer adventure is now transformed into a work of art seen by thousands—and possibly, a record of a natural world that may not survive another generation.
Le reflet de ce qu'il reste. Raphaëlle Peria, BMW ART MAKERS (2025) Raphaëlle Peria, BMW ART MAKERS
Final Reflections
In an age of digital overload and synthetic imagery, Raphaëlle Peria and Fanny Robin offer something far more tactile, poetic, and haunting. Traversée du fragment manquant isn't just about looking–it's about remembering, feeling, and mourning. It reminds us that photography, at its best, doesn't just capture the world; it interrogates our place within it.
As Peria so poignantly puts it: 'Trees are living beings that carry our memory; they are the guardians of our secrets.'
Through this remarkable collaboration, those secrets whisper again–etched in light, scratched into history, and carried forward, even as the waters rise and the trees fall.
Traversée du fragment manquant is on view at Cloître Saint-Trophime, Arles, until October 5, 2025. The exhibition will also travel to Paris Photo in November at the Grand Palais Éphémère.
Cloître Saint-Trophime, Marseille. Photograph by Lee Sharrock © Lee Sharrock