Warakurna to the World: Australian Photographers Take Centre Stage at Rencontres d’Arles 2025 Photography Festival
The global spotlight is squarely on Australian photography this year, as the renowned Rencontres d’Arles festival in France unveils its first-ever regional focus on Australia. Running from 7 July to 5 October 2025, the exhibition On Country: Photography from Australia brings together a remarkable cohort of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists whose work challenges, celebrates, and redefines what it means to belong to land.
At the heart of the festival — quite literally — is Tony Albert (Kuku Yalanji) and David Charles Collins’ image Warakurna Superheroes #1, selected by Arles Festival Director Christoph Wiesner as the hero image for the entire festival. It will be plastered across posters, signage, and marketing materials throughout Arles this summer — a thrilling achievement for Australian photography.
The image, part of a On Country series produced in collaboration with children in the remote community of Warakurna, shows Indigenous kids dressed as superheroes against the dramatic red dust of their homeland. It’s playful, powerful, and unapologetically proud.
The On Country exhibition, curated by PHOTO Australia’s Elias Redstone, guest curator Kimberley Moulton (Yorta Yorta), and curators Pippa Milne and Brendan McCleary, features over 200 works from 17 artists and collectives. This landmark presentation explores not only the visible landscapes of Australia but the deeper, often unseen cultural and spiritual ties that bind people to place.
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Established Australian Photographers
Established artists Brenda L Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra) brings an evocative lens to identity and belonging, while Michael Cook (Bidjara) offers surreal, painterly tableaus that probe colonial histories and social injustice.
Bidjara photographer Michael Cook has spent more than 25 years using the camera to explore his First Nations identity. In his striking image Majority Rule (Parliament), from the Majority Rule series, Cook imagines an Australia where the population is 96% Aboriginal and only 4% non-Indigenous. Shot in front of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, the work is both visually bold and politically pointed.
“I did a role reversal on the majority of Australia,” Cook explains. “I never saw lots of Aboriginal people getting around, going to and from work… This work references the late sixties, because that is when we had a lot of political change in Australia with the Referendum at that time.”
The repeated figure in the photograph is model Joey, multiplied to form a crowd—an image Cook says he never saw growing up. One of the figures stands at the seat once occupied by Neville Bonner, the first Aboriginal member of Parliament and a family friend who, Cook says, “helped me identify with my own Aboriginality.”
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Brenda L Croft
Professor Brenda Croft, Indigenous Art History & Curatorship, Centre for Art History and Art Theory, ANU School of Art and Design
Brenda L Croft‘s Left: Tristan (Dharawal-Yuin) 2021. Right: Matilda (Ngambi) 2020
Brenda L Croft’s portrait Matilda (Ngambri) 2020 captures Dr Matilda House, a respected Ngambri elder and lifelong advocate for Indigenous rights. As part of the series Naabami (Thou shall/will see): I am/we are Barangaroo, the image honours House’s legacy—from co-founding the Aboriginal Legal Service to delivering the first Welcome to Country at Federal Parliament. The portrait reflects not only House’s strength and experience but also the enduring spirit of resistance embodied by Barangaroo, the series’ guiding inspiration. This portrait was a National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020 Finalist.
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Maree Clarke, Ritual and Ceremony
Maree Clarke’s striking portraits under the title Ritual and Ceremony trace a powerful visual thread through the space. Together, they serve as a moving tribute to the enduring presence and profound significance of Indigenous culture in Australia.
Among the prominent names in the exhibition is Maree Clarke (Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Mutti Mutti/Boonwurrung), whose Ritual and Ceremony series includes a towering three-metre portrait of the late Uncle Jack Charles. Installed inside the historic Église Saint-Anne — a 17th-century deconsecrated church that serves as one of Arles’ most striking venues — Clarke’s work honours both cultural resilience and personal legacy.
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From Fashion to Photojournalism
The striking visual poetry of South Sudanese-born Atong Atem, who blends bold fashion with cultural narratives, and the atmospheric storytelling of Adam Ferguson, known for his powerful photojournalism, further enrich the exhibition’s breadth.
Adam Ferguson, Big Sky
“Big Sky is a photographic survey of Australia’s heartland. Drawing on childhood memories and travelling documentation, I observe fading iconic events, de-population in small-towns, Aboriginal connection to Country, pastoralism, the impacts of globalisation and the adversity of climate change. Through this work I attempt to challenge and position archetypal tropes of Australian identity with the complex realities of contemporary life in Australia’s arid interior,” Adam Ferguson says on his website.
Adam Ferguson’s portrait of Kukatja Pintupi boy Matthew West, on a hunting trip, Wirrimanu/Balgo, Kukatja Country, Western Australia, was shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2024.
The Fimiston Open Pit gold mine, a KCMG mine colloquially known as the Super Pit, Wangkatha Country, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, 2017.
Atong Atem from her Surat series
Four vivid images by Atong Atem from her Surat series (2022) are on display at Rencontres d’Arles, marking a major moment for the Melbourne-based South Sudanese artist. Originally commissioned by PHOTO Australia for the PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography, Surat—meaning “snapshots” in Sudanese Arabic—is both homage and invention, drawing from family photo albums that span generations and continents.
Atem restages and reimagines these intimate scenes as performative self-portraits, exploring the rituals of photography—dressing, posing, adjusting, capturing—as a way to reflect on identity, memory, and diaspora.
“It’s about South Sudan, so-called Australia and everywhere else in between that I’ve rested my head to dream about my people—or rather the depictions of people I don’t know but am connected to through photographs,” Atem says.
Working across photography, video, and textiles, Atem interrogates postcolonial identity and the aesthetics of migrant storytelling. Her Surat series is not just personal—it’s a layered exploration of belonging, geography, and inherited memory.
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Other standout contributions include Capemba Bumbarra, a monumental 38-metre cyanotype installation by mother-daughter duo Elisa Jane Carmichael and Sonja Carmichael (Ngugi/Quandamooka). This luminous blue work traces the journey of fresh spring water as it winds through tidal mangroves and into the salt bays of Queensland, echoing the fluidity and strength of cultural knowledge.
Emerging artists are also given a well-deserved international stage. Wani Toaishara’s poetic portraiture, Tace Stevens’ (Noongar/Spinifex) intimate landscapes, and Liss Fenwick’s eerie yet tender visual language offer fresh perspectives that speak to both personal and political terrain.
Tace Stevens, We Were Just Little Boys
In We Were Just Little Boys, Noongar/Spinifex artist Tace Stevens confronts the harrowing legacy of the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home (KBH), a state-run institution in Kempsey, NSW, that forcibly separated Indigenous boys from their families between 1924 and 1970. Commissioned in 2023 by the Magnum Foundation and World Monuments Fund, Stevens worked closely with survivors—now known as the Uncles—to document their memories and reclaim their truth.
The We Were Just Little Boys series juxtaposes past and present, exposing the stark contrast between government propaganda and lived experience. Once photographed to showcase so-called “success stories” of assimilation, the same men now stare directly into the lens, older and unflinching, asserting the reality of trauma and survival.
“The Uncles didn’t have any autonomy, voice, or power when they were at Kinchela,” Stevens writes on his website. “This body of work is a reclamation of their truth.”
Set against the bucolic backdrop of the Macleay River, Stevens’ images reveal a site soaked in silence and suffering—its beauty masking a history of forced removal, abuse, and cultural severance. We Were Just Little Boys is a powerful reminder that the story of the Stolen Generations is not a distant past, but a living truth still waiting to be heard.
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James Tylor (Kaurna) continues his practice of re-inscribing Indigenous presence through photographic interventions, while The Huxleys — Will and Garrett (Gumbaynggirr/Yorta Yorta) — bring glitter, glam, and queer defiance to regional Australia.
The exhibition also features works by Ying Ang, J Davies, Ricky Maynard (Pakana), Robert Fielding (Yankunytjatjara/Western Arrernte), and Lisa Sorgini, creating a diverse and layered experience that touches on ancestry, resistance, love, and survival.
Ricky Maynard, Portrait of a Distant Land
Four images by Ricky Maynard feature in the On Country exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles 2025, drawn from his powerful, ongoing life project Portrait of a Distant Land. A documentary photographer of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent, based on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait, Maynard is known for his quiet, resonant images that offer alternative perspectives rooted in cultural memory and connection to Country.
Portrait of a Distant Land, which Maynard began in 2005, documents Tasmania’s social and physical landscapes—following song lines, ochre trails, and the routes of displacement that mark the history of the Ben Lomond and Cape Portland peoples. It is both a visual diary and a preservation of oral histories, capturing the deep significance of place for his community.
First presented at the Australian Embassy in Paris in 2007, Portrait of a Distant Land continues to grow—quietly, resolutely—like the stories it honours.
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Ying Ang, Gold Coast, 2014
“All is not as it seems… A Lynchian-style masterpiece about a childhood spent on the affluent and aspirational Gold Coast of Queensland, Ang’s pictures suggesting a darker underbelly beyond the glitzy surf and high-rise facade of the brochures.” – Mark Power’s Top 10 Best Books of 2014
Winner of the New York Photo Festival book prize and also the Encontros Da Imagem book prize for 2014, Ying Ang’s Gold Coast was listed by Mark Power, Lensculture, Flak Photo, Voices of Photography, Asia Pacific Photobook Archive and Self Publish Be Happy in their top photobooks of 2014. Ying Ang’s Gold Coast is available from our affiliate Amazon USA.
“This series of images was made on the premise that environments of safety and danger cannot be delineated by weather and architecture. “A sunny place for shady people”, the Gold Coast became known as a perfect strip of golden beach where execution style shootings at the local mall were whispered behind pastel colored walls and porcelain veneers. This is a tale about a place that laid the flawed foundation of its character upon a mirage of tranquility. It is about the price of sun drenched afternoons hashtagged “grateful”. It is about our perceptions of safety and danger within the architecture of our built environment. It is about real estate and the beautiful lie bought and sold here every day.” says Ying Ang on their website.
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On Country: Photography from Australia
Accompanying the exhibition is a beautifully designed catalogue, On Country: Photography from Australia, published by Perimeter Editions and featuring an essay by Kelli Cole (Warumungu/Luritja). This publication ensures the legacy of the exhibition continues beyond the Provencal summer, offering a lasting resource on contemporary Australian photographic practice.
As curator Elias Redstone puts it, “On Country is a significant moment for Australian photography, amplifying the depth and diversity of our artists on a prestigious global platform.” It also marks a culmination of PHOTO Australia’s strategic partnerships with institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Photographers’ Gallery in London, and the CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto.
But nothing quite compares to the power and prestige of Arles — the beating heart of the international photography world each summer. And with Warakurna Superheroes leading the charge, it’s safe to say Australia isn’t just participating in the conversation — it’s rewriting the script.
On Country: Photography from Australia is co-produced by PHOTO Australia and Rencontres d’Arles, with support from the Australian Government’s International Cultural Diplomacy Arts Fund, the Bowness Family Foundation, FACEF (French Australian Cultural Exchange Foundation), and both the Australian and French Embassies.
The full artist list includes:
- Tony Albert (Kuku Yalanji) & David Charles Collins
- Ying Ang
- Atong Atem
- Elisa Jane Carmichael & Sonja Carmichael (Ngugi/Quandamooka)
- Maree Clarke (Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Mutti Mutti/Boonwurrung)
- Michael Cook (Bidjara)
- Brenda L Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra)
- J Davies
- Liss Fenwick
- Adam Ferguson
- Robert Fielding (Yankunytjatjara/Western Arrernte)
- The Huxleys – Will Huxley & Garrett Huxley (Gumbaynggirr/Yorta Yorta)
- Ricky Maynard (Pakana)
- Lisa Sorgini
- Tace Stevens (Noongar/Spinifex)
- Wani Toaishara
- James Tylor (Kaurna)
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For more on the Rencontres d’Arles 2025 and the On Country exhibition, visit www.rencontres-arles.com or follow @photoaust on social media.
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Rencontres d’Arles 2025: A Visual Rebellion in the Heart of Provence
From July 7 to October 5, 2025, the ancient city of Arles transforms into a vibrant canvas for the 56th edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles, the world’s premier photography festival. This year’s theme, “Disobedient Images,” invites over 160 artists to challenge conventions and reimagine narratives across 46 exhibitions spread throughout the city’s historic and contemporary venues.
A City-Wide Exhibition
Unlike traditional festivals confined to a single venue, Rencontres d’Arles sprawls across the city, utilizing Roman amphitheaters, medieval cloisters, and industrial spaces as immersive galleries. Key locations include the Parc des Ateliers, home to Luma Arles, and the Ancien Collège Mistral, which hosts the “Night of the Year” exhibition—a curated selection of standout works and institutional showcases.
Spotlight on Australia and Brazil
This edition places Australia and Brazil in the limelight. “On Country: Photography from Australia” features over 200 works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, exploring themes of ancestral ties, cultural identity, and the complex relationship to land. Notable works include Tony Albert and David Charles Collins’ “Warakurna Superheroes” and Brenda L Croft’s “Naabami (thou shall/will see): Barangaroo (army of me).”
Brazil’s contribution, “Futurs Ancestraux,” re-examines colonial archives through Afro-Brazilian, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ perspectives, featuring a major retrospective of Claudia Andujar centered on the Yanomami people.
Celebrating Resistance and Memory
Under the artistic direction of Christoph Wiesner, the festival draws inspiration from poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, presenting photography as a medium of resistance and cultural exchange. The program unfolds in six chapters exploring memory, territory, family, archival reinterpretations, and architecture, always from critical and diverse perspectives.
Notable Exhibitions and Awards
- Nan Goldin’s “Stendhal Syndrome”: A moving-image work juxtaposing photographs of classical masterpieces with intimate portraits, showcased at Église Saint-Blaise.
- Women in Motion Award: Awarded to Nan Goldin, recognizing her impactful work blending intimacy and classical art.
- Louis Roederer Foundation Discovery Award: Highlighting emerging talents like Jia Yu, whose work “Strangers Ground Control” is presented at Espace Monoprix.
Engaging the Public
Beyond exhibitions, the festival offers a dynamic program during the opening week (July 7–13), including artist talks, portfolio reviews, book signings, and workshops, fostering direct engagement between photographers and the public.
Practical Information
- Dates: July 7 – October 5, 2025
- Locations: Various venues across Arles, including Parc des Ateliers and Ancien Collège Mistral
- Tickets: Full festival passes are available for €39, with discounts for students and single-day options.
For a comprehensive program and ticketing information, visit the official website: rencontres-arles.com.
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