2025 Discovery Award Louis Roederer Foundation

The Rencontres d'Arles is opening its call for applications for the 2025 Discovery Award, part of the festival's 56th edition.

Overview

The award's aim is to promote the work of the selected artists, who will be showcased in the Discovery Award exhibition; and to reward the winning projects with the jury award of €15,000 and public award of €5,000.

Since 2021, the Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award has integrated organizations that foster emerging artists—community spaces, independent exhibition sites, artist-run spaces, hybrid exhibition spaces, galleries, institutions, foundations—that clear the ground for, identify, and support artists. These organizations, important actors in supporting photography and artists, thus become mediators and discoverers, introducing to the Discovery Award artists whose work they have identified and followed. These organizations are invited to propose an exhibition project by an artist they support whose work has recently been discovered or deserves to be seen by an international audience.

Projects selected for exhibition in the 2025 edition of the Rencontres d'Arles, in the Discovery Award exhibition, will be accompanied by the festival team and exhibition curator César González-Aguirre invited by the Rencontres d'Arles.

Practical Info

Projects selected for exhibition in the 2025 edition of the Rencontres d'Arles, in the Discovery Award exhibition, will be accompanied by the festival team and an exhibition curator invited by the Rencontres d'Arles. During opening week, a jury selected by the festival will determine the jury award, which rewards an artist and the artist's supporting organization by an acquisition of artworks in the amount of €15,000; festival visitors will determine the public award, which rewards an artist and the artist's supporting organization by an acquisition of artworks in the amount of €5,000.

The Discovery Award is part of the Rencontres d'Arles exhibition program. An exhibition curator is associated with the Discovery Award and will work on the development of the projects, from the selection to exhibition design, from concept to completion. Each project selected will have an exhibition space of approximately 10 linear meters (50 m2). The exhibition design for this space will be determined after the selection is made, in cooperation with the exhibition curator and the Rencontres d'Arles team.

Each organization (gallery, art center, community space, independent exhibition site, institution) may present, in the form of an exhibition proposal, a single artist (or a single artists' collective working as a single artistic entity).

The application must propose a photographic exhibition project by one artist whose work has recently been discovered, and be submitted by an organization only (artists may not apply directly). Organizations that may participate are galleries, art centers, community spaces, public institutions, and independent exhibition spaces. The organization's primary function must be the exhibition of artists' work. If selected, the organization and artist agree not to show the project, in whole or in part, before its exhibition at the Rencontres d'Arles 2025, and to produce the exhibition project for the Rencontres d'Arles, based on the production budget supplied by the festival.

The application must include a short biography of the artist, a CV showing the artist's exhibitions and publications, a portfolio of the artist's work, a short written presentation of the organization, the organization's website, a chronological list of exhibitions presented by the organization, title and presentation text for the project, images of works to be exhibited, specifying their number, dimensions, medium, and how they will be presented, and the estimated production budget for the exhibition.

About Les Rencontres d'Arles

Every summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city's heritage sites, the Rencontres d'Arles has been a major influence in disseminating the best of world photography and playing the role of a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents.