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September 20, 2009
According to Simon Bainbridge, editor of British Journal of Photography, the Rencontres d'Arles photo festival in recent years has found it difficult to balance populist shows that will benefit the town's tourist industry with the demands of the thousands of visitors who come during Professional Week to see something new.
It appears that the festival is increasingly split in two, with the blockbuster names shown alongside the big historical exhibitions in the old town where the tourists go, and the more contemporary work shown on the edge of Arles at the rejuvenated railway workshops, know as 'Les Ateliers'. And if plans to create a new culture park around the former SNCF sheds, based on designs drawn up by Frank Gehry and supported by the Arles-based LUMA Foundation, that distinction may prove sensible.
One of the exhibitions is Richard Avedon's In memory of the Late Mr. & Mrs. Comfort created for The New Yorker (November 6, 1995 Issue) in collaboration with Doon Arbus and featuring model Nadja Auermann:
Richard Avedon, In memory of the Late Mr. & Mrs. Comfort, 01, 1995
This was Avedon's farewell to fashion photography which had helped to make Avedon a celebrity. Bye Bye.
Richard Avedon, In memory of the Late Mr. & Mrs. Comfort, 12, 1995
It is a pretty significant fashion shoot---a spectral death-and-the-maiden one with both wearing different outfits by a variety of designers in an unromantic decrepit and shabby urban world. It that showcases everything that it supposedly satirises. It is fashion as it’s best: playful, shocking, fantatsical and fully self-aware.
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