In Deauville, the Photography of Intimacy Takes Middle Stage — Blind Magazine

Under Deauville’s shifting skies, the sixteenth version of the Planches Contact pageant this 12 months celebrates the pictures of intimacy — a style shared, in a method or one other, by all photographers, who usually start by photographing household and mates earlier than exploring extra complicated topics.

Since its creation in 2010, the pageant has reworked the Norman seaside city into a real laboratory of visible experimentation, mixing public commissions, artist residencies, open-air exhibitions, and collaborations with main photographic establishments. All this in a household spirit that appears unchanged, at the same time as a brand new workforce takes the helm this 12 months: Jonas Tebib, inventive director, and Lionel Charrier, director of pictures at French each day Libération, have succeeded Laura Serani as heads of the pageant.

“Planches Contact was born from a simple idea: to invite photographers to offer a contemporary view of Deauville and its territory,” remembers Philippe Augier, mayor of the town and founding father of the pageant. It’s greater than a slogan: every autumn, the city turns into an open-air gallery — alongside the seashore, the Quai de l’Impératrice Eugénie, Les Franciscaines, and Point de Vue — the place works produced in residence are proven for the primary time. The tenet stays unchanged: no imported exhibitions, solely works created in and for Deauville.

This formidable challenge can also be mirrored within the artists’ expertise. Invited for 4 two-week residencies, they describe heat exchanges, beneficiant assets, and treasured time for analysis and manufacturing. Each exhibiting artist additionally receives a €5,000 grant, along with the residency and manufacturing bills lined by the pageant — a considerable sum within the pictures world, nearer to a prize than a fee, and a notable distinction with the modest charges supplied by bigger festivals comparable to Arles.

Intimacy as a guiding thread

The 2025 version, below the inventive route of Jonas Tebib, explores intimacy in all its kinds — distinguishing between the “intimate” and “intimacy.” In an period saturated with public imagery, the pageant proposes a return to proximity, vulnerability, and the non-public gaze. “Intimate photography is not self-absorption — it’s a way to explore our relationship to the world,” explains Tebib.

This is clear from the opening dialogue between Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, introduced at Les Franciscaines. The exhibition traces the origins of self-staging, identification as fiction, and intimacy as a type of resistance. As the pageant’s curators observe, for Cahun, “intimacy is not a fixed private sphere but a space for reinvention,” whereas for Sherman, “distance itself creates a paradoxical form of intimacy.” By putting these two pioneers at first of the pageant, Planches Contact defines its framework: intimacy shouldn’t be confined to the household album; it may be political, constructed, carried out.

The collection introduced by the 18 resident photographers every open singular paths between reminiscence, identification, and territory. Chinese artist Lin Zhipeng (No. 223), a key determine of the Asian scene, continues in Deauville his exploration of a free, sensual intimacy — our bodies in landscapes, youth, and want. The pageant describes it as “a joyful, erotic, and colorful intimacy” in a retrospective of his twenty-year profession at Point de Vue. Lebanese photographer Myriam Boulos leads the pageant’s first off-site residency from Beirut, persevering with her work on the theme of intimacy. Her photos from What’s Ours echo these produced in Normandy, reflecting the pageant’s want to open Deauville to different geographies of the non-public.

Several different residencies discover the delicate border between territory and inside life. Carline Bourdelas attracts inspiration from Bonjour Tristesse, evoking in Deauville the luminous melancholy of youth in suspension. Italian photographer Renato D’Agostin, a grasp of black and white, creates what the pageant calls an “album of personal memories” drawn from the city — a love story replayed in opposition to the backdrop of seaside cinema. Julien Magre, recognized for his household narratives, departs from the home circle to handle an imaginary determine of Deauville, “Madame S.,” impressed by the city’s personal mythos — a poetic stroll by means of an emotional panorama. German artist Henrike Stahl revisits the princess fantasy by photographing right now’s château dwellers, a recent reflection on privilege and solitude shot in a Normandy property the place she lived for a part of her residency.

Two established names anchor the pageant inside a broader historical past of the physique and panorama. Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen presents a brand new collection of self-portraits made in Normandy, proven alongside a retrospective on the seashore — a dialogue the place intimacy actually passes by means of the physique, nude inside nature. At the opposite finish of the spectrum, French portraitist Frédéric Stucin turns his lens towards the backstage world of Normandy’s cabarets: somewhat than the efficiency, he pictures what occurs “before” and “after,” when make-up fades and the persona dissolves. Here once more, intimacy shouldn’t be secrecy however the second when the picture falls away. During the pageant’s opening week, Stucin additionally introduced a number of drag performers to Les Franciscaines for a free night present that drew an enthusiastic native crowd.

Support and mentorship

The pageant continues to emphasise its dedication to rising artists. The former Tremplin Jeunes Talents has advanced into the Young Photographic Creation Prize, now open to artists aged 18 to 35 and providing a residency on the Villa Pérochon in Niort. The jury is chaired this 12 months by Rima Abdul Malak, former French Minister of Culture, who notes: “This award is much more than a prize — it’s an act of trust in the younger generation, a belief in the new perspectives they can bring us.”

Alongside her sit Philippe Augier (mayor of Deauville), Alain Genestar (Polka Magazine), Anne Lacoste (Institut pour la photographie de Lille), Nicolas Jimenez (Le Monde), Philippe Guionie (Villa Pérochon), Lionel Charrier, and Jonas Tebib — a powerful institutional community that reinforces the pageant’s credibility. This 12 months’s laureate, Naïma Lecomte, adopted the course of the Touques River — from its supply by means of rural landscapes to its mouth between Trouville and Deauville — exploring how water shapes reminiscence, geography, and human presence.

The sixteenth version additionally strengthens its worldwide attain, by means of the Lebanese residency and long-term partnerships with the Photo4Food Foundation, we are_Paris, and Paris Photo. More than a program, Planches Contact capabilities as an ecosystem: supporting artists, circulating their work to Paris, and increasing the lifetime of the photographs past the pageant. This 2025 version thus stands as a pivotal second: new management, a clearly outlined theme, a requirement for rigor in manufacturing, renewed help for rising expertise, and a unifying message operating all through — that in Deauville, pictures shouldn’t be a backdrop, however an area of hospitality for the intimate.

The Planches Contact Festival runs in Deauville, France till January 4, 2026.