For better or for worse, family remains a boundless source of inspiration. This year, Arles devotes significant space to it: from a poignant reflection on maternal grief to a sweeping inquiry into fatherhood—featuring tender fathers, authoritarian fathers, father figures in cassocks or political uniforms. Add to that a strong dose of sisterhood, and feminist or non-binary perspectives on family politics.
If you’re drawn to ghost stories, begin with Keisha Scarville’s exhibition at the Henri Comte space. Since the passing of her mother in 2015, the New York-based artist has been working through absence and mourning. Simply titled Alma, in homage to the deceased, the series is influenced by 19th-century spirit photography—images that sought to reveal ghostly presences through orbs, dust, or double exposure.
Scarville draws particularly from the tradition of the egun, masked spirits in Beninese voodoo. “She stages herself in delicate black-and-white portraits, using her own body as a conduit for absence made visible.” At times, she shifts from color to monochrome. “The original brilliance of the printed fabrics, now stripped of their colors, poignantly reflects the pain of loss and the transformations it engenders.”
Elsewhere in Arles, photography legend Nan Goldin—this year’s guest of honor with her exhibition “Stendhal Syndrome”—shares the spotlight with another heavyweight: Armenian-American photographer Diana Markosian. Known for her deeply personal work exploring memory, abandonment, and exile, she presents Father, a series delving into her complicated reunion with a long-absent father.
Camille Lévêque continues this exploration at the Friche SNCF, hosted by the Ground Control collective, with her project In Search of the Father. “What makes a good father?” she asks. “And a bad one?” “What place do fathers have in society?” “What influence does he have on the way we construct our identity?” To unpack these questions, the artist draws on a decade’s worth of research and material.
Her project brings together family photos, postcards, testimonies, movie excerpts, personal objects, advertising imagery, and religious iconography. “With a view to opening up the subject to a collective approach, and with a process that combines images and text, she talks to fathers about fatherhood, to a Catholic priest about the paradox of being a son and father whilebeing childless, and to sex workers about patriarchy and the incest fetish.”
With this patchwork of materials, Lévêque constructs “a multifaceted portrait of the father figure.” The result is a fractured, at times humorous portrait, that gradually turns inward. “Behind this vast iconographic fresco, deceptively light-hearted in tone, the author gradually reveals the central focus of her interest in fathers: the complexity of the relationship with her own.”
Had enough of men? Not to worry—Arles offers balance. For a testosterone-free take on family, head to the Église des Frères-Prêcheurs, where the Van Gogh Foundation presents “Women, Sisters” by Erica Lennard. In the 1970s, the American photographer began a photographic ode to femininity, using her signature soft focus and nude imagery like a gentle caress.
“Elizabeth and I are sisters. We are all sisters,” wrote Erica Lennard in the epigraph to Les femmes, les soeurs (1976). Based on her sister’s poems and their correspondence, the book is filled with contemplative black-and-white portraits of Elizabeth, Lennard herself, and their friends. That same year, the work was first exhibited at Paris’s Galerie Rouge, led by the late Agathe Gaillard.
“This exhibition revisits, for the first time, the story of this seminal work—from its inception to its reception—drawing on previously unseen archival materials,” explains curator Clara Bouveresse. “Breaking away from dominant visual conventions, Lennard chose not to photograph passive, objectified models, but rather collaborated with her sister and friends—inviting them to subvert the codes of seduction.”
Sisterhood also runs through the work of Carmen Winant, whose exhibition centers on female representation. Winant formed a creative bond with Carol Newhouse, a pioneering figure in lesbian feminist photography and co-founder of WomanShare, a women-only commune in 1970s California. Their dialogue led to a collaborative project titled Double, on view at the Cruise.
“Carmen Winan and Carol Newhouse have created unique new work that weaves together their stories, passions, and curiosities,” says curator Nina Strand. “Over the course of a year, they engaged in a photographic dialogue—one would shoot a roll of film, wind it up, and send it across the country, where the other would expose it once more—using the technique of double exposure to create a layered interplay between their images.”
This approach disrupts the notion of the solitary (often male) author and invites a shared visual authorship. And to fully reject the white, cisgender, binary, patriarchal gaze, don’t miss Lila Neutre’s Dancing on Ashes at the Maison des Peintres: a vibrant celebration of drag, twerking, and voguing. Her work is an exuberant ode to movement and freedom that shatters conventions of race, gender, and class.
“’Dancing on Ashes’ seeks to hold space for the flamboyance of these nocturnal beauties and the strategies they develop to evade the rules and norms of the dominant society that constrain them,” Neutre explains. Brothers, sisters, chosen families—next time you pose for a family portrait, dare to break the frame. Stick out your tongue, the little bird might still come out.
Discover these exhibitions at Les Rencontres de la photographie festival in Arles, from July 7 to October 5, 2025.
