Xiamen. Photography festivals are blossoming in southern China. A partnership between France’s famous Les Rencontres d’Arles and the Jimei area in the southern city of Xiamen has resulted in the launch of a French-Chinese photography festival. Called Jimei x Arles: East West Encounters International Photo Festival (until 16 December), the event has been organised by Arles’s director Sam Stourdzé and Rong Rong, a photographer who founded Beijing’s Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, which opened an outpost in Xiamen at the same time as the festival.
Jimei x Arles recruited the ubiquitous independent curator Li Zhenhua to direct the inaugural festival, which features around 3,000 works by 150 artists. It takes place at three venues: Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre, Yuanbo Garden and Tan Kan Kee Art Center. The event was organised in conjunction with TianxiaJimei Media. Funding comes from the district as well as corporate sponsors, including Xiamen Bank.
Rong says: “We previously worked with Arles for three years on Caochangdi Photospring,” which was held annually from 2010 to 2012. Rong comes from Fujian and left the coastal province more than 20 years ago. “It’s great to be back,” he says. “Jimei is a very cultured area” and a leading district for education. Rong says that the number of photography exhibitions in China is increasing but that the medium is still “much neglected” by museums and “a majority of people still don’t define it as art or worth collecting”.
Meanwhile, the tenth edition of Lianzhou Fotofest also opened last month (until 10 December). The event was organised by the government of the small city in nearby Guangdong Province. It is directed by the festival’s founder Duan Yuting. Its chief curator is Christopher Phillips of New York’s International Center of Photography. Phillips says: “Duan Yuting has made the Lianzhou Festival the most open and experimental of the many photo festivals in China. She has created an unlikely international crossroads.” He says that the Chinese Photography Association is an enormous and well-funded national organisation. “Its motto seems to be ‘Let a hundred photo festivals blossom’.”
