UFO Photography Show Captivates at Arles Festival
Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, the world's most prestigious photography festival, is captivating audiences this year with a standout exhibition titled "We Are Not Alone: Alien Images." The show features dozens of photographs from private and public archives that present visual documents of UFOs, unexplained phenomena, and close encounters with aliens. Most images date from the 1960s to the 1980s, a peak period for UFO sightings in the United States, which recorded the highest number of such sightings in the last century.
The exhibition includes accounts like that of Paul Villa, a mechanic from Albuquerque who claimed in 1963 to have been invited via telepathic messages to photograph an alien spaceship. Similarly, Swiss man Billy Meier, who saw his first flying saucer at age five, has taken over 1,400 photographs of them. One of Meier's images appears in the famous poster from The X-Files, emblazoned with the words "I Want to Believe." While all the pictures are ultimately the result of rudimentary tricks or misidentification, they draw viewers in with their fascinating storytelling.
Rediscovered Masters and Photo Novels
This 57th edition of the festival is notably playful and quirky, with fewer major shows by living artists. At La Crosière, the Ivorian photographer Paul Kodjo, who died in 2021, receives his first major solo exhibition in France. The show, the result of over 15 years of preservation work, features thousands of negatives. Kodjo ran a studio in Abidjan and photographed dance halls and fashion, but he was also one of the first African photographers to create "photo novels." The centerpiece is a series of theatrically staged scenes of seduction and romance shot in the 1960s and 1970s for a weekly Sunday paper. These photographic soap operas, with titles like "Lost and Found," capture the culture and social attitudes of Abidjan during an economically prosperous time.
Animal Photography Through the Ages
At Méchanique Generale at Luma Arles, the exhibition "Animal Model" spans 200 years of animal photography. Curated into sections from 19th-century naturalism to TikTok videos, it features works by Elliot Erwitt, Andreas Gursky, Roni Horn, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Highlights include Masahisa Fukase's series "Ravens," an angsty exploration of the symbolic bird and mental illness, and photographs of Polish biologist Simona Kossak, who lived in the Białowieża Forest with a lynx and wild boar for three decades. The show touches on coexistence and human-nature interactions, complementing other exhibitions at Luma, such as Verena Paravel's film "Delta," which uses innovative camera and sound techniques to reveal sounds usually inaudible to humans.
Poetic and Mystical Exhibitions
Uzbek artist Saodat Ismailova's exhibition "Amanat, The Sacred Forest" weaves ancient folklore with landscapes. Her 2017 film "The Haunted" is a love letter to the extinct Turan tiger, an icon of Central Asia. The show centers on three new films shot in Arslanbob, one of the world's largest walnut forests in southern Kyrgyzstan. Known as the healing forest, locals believe its nuts are hallucinogenic. The films capture a waterfall in different seasons, with people performing rituals at this sacred site. Projected on a massive scale, the waterfall's might and beauty dwarf viewers, while the constant sound of water gives voice to nature's resistance.
American artist Ming Smith's solo show "Wandering Light" at the historic Saint Anne church is her first in France. Her soft, blurred black-and-white photographs, such as the 1978 masterpiece of Sun Ra, seem to vibrate and refuse to be reduced to a single shape. Smith's work recalls Goethe's observation: "Black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature."
Intimate Street Photography and Gang Portraits
Martine Barrat's exhibition "Soul of the City" showcases the 93-year-old photographer's work from the 1970s in New York's South Bronx. After a dance injury, Barrat began filming and photographing, closely working with the Roman Kings and Ghetto Brothers gangs. Her film "You Do the Crime, You Do the Time" drew thousands to the Whitney in 1978. The exhibition includes intimate portraits of gang members and residents of the South Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem. Barrat's minimal compositions are delicate and soulful, capturing moments like a six-year-old boxer wrapping his hands or a gang leader looking at rubble on his release from prison. As she says, "It is in places of violence that I find love." Her portraits rival those of Bruce Davidson and Roy DeCarava.
Challenging Hierarchies in Photography
While the festival includes some stale group shows and celebrity misfires, the exhibitions on UFOs, animals, magical forests, and interconnectedness create a harmonious whole. By placing amateur alien pranksters alongside masters like William Klein, and uncovering neglected masters, the festival continues to challenge hierarchies and ideas of what makes a valuable photograph for our times. Les Rencontres de la Photographie runs at various venues in Arles, France, until 4 October.
