Martin Parr inside his Real Food van at Photo London, May 2016

Parr's Real Food and Kessels' Failures head for Arles

Magnum Photos president’s food van and curator’s failed photos to go on show at the French photo fair

If you see this caravan en-route from Paris to the southern French city of Arles over the coming weeks do give us a toot. After successful stops in the British and French capitals, Martin Parr’s Real Food Van will be welcoming visitors at Les Rencontres d’Arles, France’s leading photography festival.

From 4 until 10 July, visitors will also be able admire images from the Magnum president’s new book, Real Food, and buy copies of both this new book and others from the delightful, gingham-wrapped vehicle.

And that’s not the only Phaidon author at Arles this year. The photo curator Erik Kessels will present a selection of fabulously failed photographs at the city’s Palais de l'Archevêché for the full duration of the fair, 4 July – 25 September. Look out for images by Lucas Blalock and Thomas Mailaender among others, all of which demonstrate, as Kessels puts it in his book Failed It, mistakes are an essential part of the creative process.

 

From Failed It! by Erik Kessels
From Failed It! by Erik Kessels

Thomas Mailaender is also serving as a curator at Arles, helping to oversee a show of vintage satirical photography produced by the French magazine Hari Kiri. A precursor to Charlie Hebdo, the title published moderately risqué photo shoots which, to today’s viewers, look something like a mid-century take on Maurizio Cattelan’s Toilet Paper.

 

Untitled. Concept and images by Toiletpaper magazine : Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Image courtesy of Arles
Untitled. Concept and images by Toiletpaper magazine : Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Image courtesy of Arles

Speaking of which, the Italian artist is also putting in an appearance at Arles, displaying a selection of his and fellow TP collaborator Pierpaolo Ferrari's latest colour-saturated imagery.

 

Cigarettes, 2016 (video still) by Christian Marclay.
Cigarettes, 2016 (video still) by Christian Marclay.

There’s also a show of Christian Marclay’s stop-motion animations of street rubbish, assembled from pictures he took on the pavements of London over the past few months. You can find out more about this here.

The veteran British war photographer Don McCullin receives a career retrospective at Arles, following on from his headline show at Photo London last month, and ongoing documentary work is represented by the likes of João Pina, the Portuguese photographer who spent the past decade chronicling the after effects of Operation Condor, a secret anti-communist military plan started in 1975, by six Latin American dictatorships, which lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

If that sounds a bit too grim, then don’t forget to check out Camarguais Western, a selection of vintage stills from Westerns shot in the south of France. Johnny Hallyday on a horse? What’s not to like?

 

Johnny on the set of the film D'où viens-tu Johnny (1963). Photograph by Claude Schwartz. Courtesy of the Claude Schwartz Photographe association. Image courtesy of Arles
Johnny on the set of the film D'où viens-tu Johnny (1963). Photograph by Claude Schwartz. Courtesy of the Claude Schwartz Photographe association. Image courtesy of Arles

You can find more about Martin Parr’s Real Food here; for more on Erik Kessels’ Failed It! go here; for greater insight into Christian Marclay get this book; for more on Maurizio Cattelan get this; and for everything else in between buy The Photo Book, here.