A total of 46 exhibitions are set to take place as part of the Brazil-France 2025 Season, celebrating the artistic richness of Latin America. These exhibitions will cover topics ranging from Brazilian favelas to the Sicilian mafia and the indigenous peoples of Australia. This year’s edition aims to “give voice to everyone” through images with “different perspectives,” according to the director of the Encounters, Christoph Wiesner.
“From Australia to Brazil, passing through North America and the Caribbean, at a time when the world is shaken by the rise of nationalism, nihilism, and environmental crises, the photographs on display offer an essential counterpoint to the dominant discourse, celebrating the diversity of cultures, genders, and origins,” Christoph Wiesner stated, defending photography as an instrument of resistance.
Curated by Thyago Nogueira from the Contemporary Photography Department at the Moreira Salles Institute in São Paulo and editor-in-chief of ZUM magazine, the exhibition “Futuros Ancestrais” focuses on memory and identity. It presents works by contemporary Brazilian artists who “denounce historical violence against the Afro-Brazilian, indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ communities,” according to the press release.
This exhibition includes works by Igi Lola Ayedun, Denilson Baniwa, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Rafa Bqueer, Yhuri Curz, Mayara Ferrão, Coletivo Lakapoy, Paulo Nazareth, Melissa Oliveira, Lincoln Péricles, Ventura Profana, and Glicéria Tupinamba.
“Artists who, through photography, video, and collage, deal with contemporary Brazil by reinterpreting its archives and visual traditions,” Thyago Nogueira explained, adding that these artists challenge and question “the construction of stereotypes and the official history of the country.”
In the exhibition by Helouise Costa and Marcella Legrand Marer “Construction, reconstruction, deconstruction,” Brazilian modern photography from 1939 to 1964 is explored, featuring works by 33 photographers of various origins, including Julio Agostinelli, Geraldo de Barros, Chico Albuquerque, Marcel Giró, and Gertrudes Altschul.
“It presents Brazilian modernist photography through the prism of the production of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB, founded in 1939), an amateur photography club in São Paulo that established itself as a cradle of innovative practices and research, revolutionizing Brazilian photography and promoting its globalization and institutionalization,” the curators noted.
Also in Arles will be an exhibition from the “Retratistas do Morro” project, resulting from the curatorial and investigative work by visual artist Guilherme Cunha, initiated in 2015 on the collection of photographers João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, the “Retratistas do Morro,” built from the 1960s to the 1990s.
This collection gathers over 250,000 images of daily life in the favelas of the Serra community in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, captured over nearly 30 years. According to the curator, responsible for “preserving the historicity” of this collection, each exhibition of the project reflects “the transformations in the way” it is possible to view “this cultural heritage.”
“The images produced by Afonso and João reveal other versions of the history of the cities and favela populations in Brazil, told from their experiences, family reality, events like weddings, births, baptisms, football matches, funerals, graduations, dances, and shack constructions,” said the curator, cited in the presentation published on the website of the São Paulo State Department of Culture.
“These are intimate moments and, at the same time, so common that they represent an important part of the Brazilian narrative: the way of existing and resisting against social invisibility present in the communities of large metropolises.” Thus, according to Guilherme Cunha, the significance of the exhibition transcends “the borders of Minas Gerais, expanding to the reality of all the favelas in the country.”
After reaching a record 160,000 visitors in 2024, this year’s Arles Photography Encounters will also “explore the image in a polyphonic form,” showcasing more intimate works from American photographers Nan Goldin and Louis Stettner, as well as works from Italian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, who passed away in 2022 and was known for documenting the crimes of the Sicilian mafia.
