Early lifetime print
Picture: 27.5 x 18.5 cm
OPENING WEEK 7 - 13 JULY
ESPACE VAN GOGH
Edition 2025, 2024 CURATORIAL RESEARCH GRANT
Louis Stettner is the author of a major body of work produced on both sides of the Atlantic. An authentic bridge between American Street Photography and French Humanist Photography, Stettner's lifelong passion for social and political issues and the history of his craft led him to work in many forms: writing, collage, sculpture and painting. Almost ten years after his death, this exhibition sheds new light on his work. Entirely coming from a loan of the Settner archives, it presents nearly 150 historical and modern photographs printed by Stettner himself, some of them previously unpublished, as well as numerous original documents that evidence the complexity of an extraordinary personality.
Born in Brooklyn in 1922, Louis Stettner trained at the Photo League and then on the Pacific front, where he documented the ruins of Hiroshima. His 1946 series on the New York subway was noticed by Sid Grossman. It earned him a place at the Photo League school, where he was brought into contact with Willy Ronis to curate an exhibition of French photography in New York. Close to Édouard Boubat and Brassaï, he settled in Paris from 1947 to 1952, a period he considers one of the happiest in his life, leading him to settle there permanently in 1990. Travels to Europe and Mexico reveal a growing interest in the body and gesture, but it was in New York in the 1950s that he produced two of his most masterful series, Penn Station and Nancy, the Beat Generation. In the 1970s, he was politically active in the feminist, antiracist, and anti-poverty struggles, attracting the attention of the FBI while also receiving for his images of working people. Until the 2000s, he continued his urban explorations in New York and Paris, which he portrayed in increasingly fragmented ways.
Completed at over 90 years of age, his last series on the trees of the Alpilles resonates like the pinnacle of a journey guided by a thirst for freedom, resistance to headwinds and the wonder of being alive.
Virginie Chardin, Curator
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Every summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city's exceptional heritage sites, the Rencontres d'Arles has been a major influence in dissiminating the best of world photography and playing the role of a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents.
Edition 2025
DISOBEDIENT IMAGES
