Photos of Photos — And Other Minor Crises
Simiane, Jul 24, 2025
Contrary to what I originally thought, LRd’A is not an art or photography fair. It’s a festival that runs for three months every year. The first week is dedicated to the professional side of the photography world—agencies, photographers, a lot of networking and profiling, I imagine. The rest of the time it opens up into one long festival, with exhibitions spread out all over the city.
Even though Arles is small and pretty sleepy, so calling it “city” might be generous. For those of you who don’t know, it has a beautifully preserved Roman amphitheatre—two tiers, like the Colosseum in Rome, just smaller. It’s a gorgeous setting, especially in the middle of summer.
LRd’A is the kind of event you really can’t do in a single day. There’s simply too much to see. And you never retain as much as you think you will—because it’s full-on visual, intellectual, and emotional overload. Everything starts to blur together, and then pretty much disappears.
There’s no time to digest anything.
What I’d love is to stay for a week and visit just a handful of sites each day. As it was, the only things I have to hold onto are the photos I took myself—of photos, ironically—which will probably replace any actual memories I have at the moment, unless I manage to write a few impressions down. Which I almost never find time to do.
Anyway. Long-winded introduction. Back to LRd’A and those big, almost incomprehensible art events...
The first one I ever went to was Art Basel, one of the biggest contemporary art fairs in the world, back in the early 2000s. Despite a couple of years in Berlin, I was still pretty much a small town country bumpkin at that point, and Art Basel was definitely an experience.
The amount of art that should only ever be in a museum, at least in my opinion —a part of Art Basel is early- and mid-20th-century work and not from living artists—was mind-blowing. The openly discussed five- to six-figure prices, too. Not to mention the local fauna.
People who work in the high end art market often have no creative bone in their body. The owners of galleries, undoubtedly, do. Love art at least. The people who flock there to work generally don’t. (Didn’t?) What they can do is size people up for their buying power, suck up accordingly, and treat the rest with carefully studied arrogance.
I can laugh about all of this now, but back then it hit a nerve. These people weren’t much older than me, but they seemed to have this effortless confidence that I thought I’d never develop. I didn’t. But I’ve come to understand that most of us never do—we just get better at managing our emotions and reading other people. It’s all one big game of perception. Managing it, decoding it, surviving it.
Anyway. I kept going to Art Basel for years, until I finally lived too far away to make the trip. It resurfaced in my life with a Paris version —in 2022, I think—and of course, I again go every year. I still observe the same things. And recognise my older self in those reactions.
I still struggle with the idea that certain artists are for sale. It’s naive, I know, but that’s just me. It’s something I’ve never been able to comprehend. I still find the people there to buy art odd. But now the kids—yes, kids—working at the galleries make me smile. I see their confident façades for what they are: armour. Insecurity dressed up in sleek outfits. But they’re also more polite than they used to be. Less quick to size you up.
LRd’A felt different. Even though, at the end of it, I felt exactly the same: back and feet aching, slightly dazed, and already nursing the beginnings of a mild emotional hangover. There might be some people who are creators, makers, artists, whatever they call themselves, who can look at other people’s work without constantly positioning themselves in comparison. Most of us cannot. So a full day of looking at stuff really did my head in.
I used to do a lot of photography, and I still work with photographs in my practice, so this is close enough to home for that internal dialogue to happen. I’ve never been a technically proficient photographer. I’m not interested in gear or perfect lighting or getting everything “right.” I care about what I see, what it means, how I capture it, what it does—to and for me.
So even when I come across technically brilliant photographs—and I do love them—they don’t really activate the part of my brain that starts comparing. It’s not “could I have done this?” or “could I have done it better?” What starts spinning is: how did they approach the subject? Why? What was the idea? What’s the motivation behind this image?
And when I start thinking about that, I can’t help but start thinking about my own motivation. What am I doing? Why? Is there clarity behind it? And does this make me an artist, too?
It’s not about talent or skill or even execution. Those things don’t trip me up. It’s the artistic integrity—if that’s even the right term—that pulls me in and sometimes pushes me into that old spiral of self-doubt.
Less now than in the past, thank god. Mostly, I left LRd’A inspired. Motivated. Buzzing with new ideas. Still feeling legit.
What really impressed me was the quality and variety of the work on show. LRd’A lives up to the reputation it has here in France. I have no idea how well-known it is elsewhere, but this was its 56th edition. And the exhibition design! Excellent. Nothing flashy, nothing gimmicky—just thoughtful attention to detail and consistency across 27 different locations. They’ve been doing this a long time, and it shows—even though longevity doesn’t necessarily guarantee taste or care, but here, it clearly does.
So yes, I’m definitely adding this one to my yearly art event calendar. Even with the inevitable overwhelm that comes with it.
And last, but very much not least: the people. Again.
Arles has a (publicly funded) university where you can study photography, and I imagine a lot of the people working for LRd’A during the summer months are students (who don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to study there), or locals who grew up with the event and its atmosphere. Mostly—but not exclusively—young, polite, curious. And I know this makes me sound like my own grandmother, but curiosity is not something I find all that often in young people these days. Polite, yes—interested, no. And oh, what a relief. The whole thing felt so refreshingly unpretentious compared to similar events in Paris. Also, no sales, nothing for sale.
Too often in Paris, it’s all about having been there. You go so you can talk about it, post about it, vlog about it. Even the staff can get caught up in that performance. And then there are the tourists—just wanting selfies in front of whatever's trending.
Smaller events, on the other hand, are often underfunded, and sometimes seem almost defiant about it. There’s a look now to having no budget—leaning into the “undone” aesthetic—and I’m tired of it. I can’t quite put my finger on why, maybe because I’ve spent years organising things on next-to-no budget myself and am tired of that too.
LRd’A clearly has funding. And maybe pretence during that first week. Or under the surface. What do I know? Maybe I’m comparing apples to oranges. But still—it felt different.
My mixed feelings about the higher-end art market are evolving, too. That very top tier—where art becomes an investment asset, just one with more interesting bragging rights—is still completely alien to me. Not something I want to be part of or can relate to. But that middle space? Where art is being taken seriously enough for people to put money behind it without selling out? That’s starting to feel more appealing. For whatever that’s worth.
Maybe that’s what these events are really about for me. Less about seeing everything, or remembering every single work, and more about the ripple effect they leave behind. The lingering questions. The private conversations I end up having with myself about value, purpose, and what I’m doing in this space. Arles reminded me that I still care—deeply—and that there’s room to be moved, to be surprised, and to be overwhelmed in a good way. I didn’t walk away with clarity, but with curiosity, and a million ideas. And at this point in my life, I’ll take that as a win.
