She said For years I've hated photography

She said: "For years I've hated photography." I thought that anyone could do. All that needed to do was aim and, at the limit, making the point and you had an image. "It is Nan Goldin, born in 1953, the American who has lived in France and are often summarized the work as"high priestess of the New York underground ". Clearly, his words were not retained against it, because this year it is the Guest curator of the largest and oldest festival of French photo, the meetings of Arles. The demonstration installed throughout the City celebrates therefore forty years with as conductor a woman who invented a new fiscal year in photos.

Nan Goldin, daughter of the "middle class" tormented us, lived the addiction to the drug, the ravages of AIDS, but also the "fascination for the marginality, the world of drag queens and gender". It is told in little academicians, spontaneous, images that transform the viewer in voyeur. But, above all, she has found a new form to tell the story of his life: the slide show. The formula sounds a little outdated, but, in fact, it project images one after the other in a musical context that directs thought.

French surprise

Explanations of the author: "cinema is the greatest influence on my life, my the broader field of knowledge, a field that I respect, who inspires me.". This is why I do slide shows, which are like movies consisting of still images. "A Arles are projected two of its shows dealing with one of the suicide of her sister of nineteen"Sister, saintes and sybilles"(which had been planned in 2004 at the chapelle Saint-Louis of the Salpêtrière in Paris, during the fall Festival) and for the other to a thematic Chronicle of his life passed"the ballad of sexual dependency"(already shown in the collection Lambert Avignon).

But Arles is sinking further still in the world of Nan Goldin. There is a "front-Goldin", i.e. the collection of photos she has made and strangely resembling its production. And an "after-Goldin", i.e. the artists that she enjoys and that she was invited. "I am attracted by images that evoke me parallels with my own experiences, either literally or unconsciously - lovers of night life, Lesbian images, drag-queens, of opium smokers, of death (...)". Photography interests me is neither historical nor pedantic, or a particular type but that moves me. "His collection is therefore no surprise. The modernist photographer Germaine Krull, known for his geometric photos of architectures of iron, she chooses instead the "images of lesbians in antics" and she selected in Andy Warhol a lithograph representing a close-up of fellatio.

However, there was a great surprise: Jean-Christophe Bourcart. French, born in 1960, sought on the Internet "The Most Dangerous City in the USA" and he found Camden, New Jersey. The city is two hours from New York, but it conveys an atmosphere of end of the world. A forgotten city, distress and poverty. The texts accompanying the prints are not legends, but real challenging stories. A kind of Tintin photographer in the country of the crack and prostitution.

Among the 66 proposed for these meetings, exhibitions can be seen in the category classic, the photo humanist of the only living genus giant, Willy Ronis, who had been shown in 2006 at Paris City Hall. In the category social satire, Arles exposes the British Martin Parr, being also an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. And in the contemporary art of conceptual type category, there is the excellent Roni Horn, which is the summer the subject of a retrospective about 30 kilometres away, at the Lambert Foundation in Avignon.

In summary: this year the meetings of Arles are more coherent than usual, but reserve less of surprises and new exhibitions.