EN FR
A bold, inclusive, and professional edition.
The OFF Photo Festival 2025 brought together:• 500+ artists
• 200 exhibitions
• 110 venues across the city
• 30,000 visitors during opening week
• 50,000 visitors over the full three-month period
60% of the programmed artists are emerging creators:
Under the sun, images burn.
They saturate, seduce, manipulate.
They flood our eyes and fragment our realities.
In a world shaken by crises and uncertainty, culture is pushed to the margins.
Spaces close. Voices fade. Imagination is tamed.
At the OFF, we resist.
We hold space — we open it, we share it.
We stand for places that are accessible to all: bold, unruly, welcoming dissident bodies, marginalized voices and emerging desires.
Here, diversity, inclusion and equity lead the way.
In an image-saturated world, learning to see becomes an act of freedom.
To create, disrupt, deconstruct — is to invent new narratives.
To refuse the ones imposed.
The OFF is a spark.
A shifting ground where we try, fail, experiment, rise again.
A festival where art exists without justification.
Where looking is already taking action.
Creating is resisting.
Sharing is fighting.
Seeing is acting.
Key Figures — OFF Photo 2025
A bold, inclusive and professional edition:
• 500+ artists
• 200 exhibitions
• 110 venues across the city
• 30,000 visitors during Opening Week
• 50,000 visitors over the full duration
60% of the artists were emerging voices →
the OFF confirms its role as a launchpad for new creation.
The program showcased:
• feminist, LGBTQIA+ and youth-driven projects (The Dreamers Award)
• eco-conscious and participatory practices
• strong international collaborations
A festival that remains: free, inclusive, daring — powered by collective creativity.
Three OFF Hubs
The HQ
A welcoming venue for intimate exhibitions and residencies, connected to international networks such as InCadaquès Festival and Reporters Without Borders.
Espace Mistral
A lively meeting ground for audiences and artists — a space for discovery, exchange and celebration.
Le Printemps
Dedicated to the opening and participatory projects: workshops, collective spaces, volunteer-driven energy.
Three Program Axes
OFF Programming
→ Exhibitions, talks, screenings, awards, encounters
Associated OFF
→ Partnerships with Fujikina, VII Foundation, UPP, Fondation des Treilles, Impulse Festival, Marrakech, Sun/Sun, Nuit de la Roquette…
Registered Venues
→ 110 exhibition spaces across Arles
- 1 venue in the region (expanded reach in 2025)
Visibility & Tools
• 15,000 free printed programs
(160+ pages / printed in France)
• Interactive app + digital tools
for accessible and enhanced visitor experience
You can find the discussions in the radio du off
A window on the world
The program affirmed a strong international and committed identity. The Mistral highlighted the contemporary scene of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the intercultural dialogue of the Rencontres de Marrakech. Social engagement was carried by a carte blanche given to CCFD-Terre Solidaire and a major evening dedicated to photojournalism, bringing together World Press Photo, the VII Foundation, and the 40th anniversary of Reporters Without Borders. Artistic emergence was a guiding thread, with works from TALM Le Mans, Oeildeep, the Tendance Floue collective, and students from ENSP Arles. Finally, the feminist cause and visual education were honored through the Iluminadas day and projects by ATD Fourth World.As night fell, the Espace Mistral transformed into a space of conviviality and sonic experimentation. The opening night by La Kabine launched the festivities with Dysnomia’s electro performances and Frédéric D. Oberland’s audiovisual live set. The week was marked by a variety of atmospheres, from the Latin warmth of the Iluminadas Night to the visual and musical immersion of Polish Paradise Night. The highlight of the week was the Night of Emergence, featuring screenings of the 31 finalists of the SAIF x La Kabine Revelation Prize 2025, before concluding on a festive note with the Basse Fréquence collective.
During the summer, two evenings were organised with Permadanse at Croisière, combining performance and visual imagery.
The Associates: An ecosystem of expert partners
The Off Festival Arles 2025 shone thanks to the strong collaboration between key institutional and private stakeholders. Fujikina Arles transformed the former ENSP into a vibrant hub hosting more than 60 workshops and exhibitions, including rare archives from Magnum Photos. The committed and historical dimension was carried by the VII Foundation, with a moving tribute to war reporters of 1975, and by the Fondation des Treilles, which highlighted its residency laureates.Advocacy for photographers was central to discussions, led by the UPP (Union of Professional Photographers), which organized talks and portfolio reviews at the Maison des photographes. Finally, this constellation of talent was enriched by the energy of the Impulse Festival, the 10th anniversary of SUN/SUN’s editorial experimentation, and cross-cultural connections.
The 2025 Off once again confirmed Arles’ creative energy and cultural appeal. With 120 exhibition venues spread across the city, this edition offered a rich and vibrant journey filled with discoveries, encounters, and diverse perspectives. Galleries, independent spaces, heritage sites, and unexpected locations welcomed artists, photographers, and visitors in a lively and friendly atmosphere.
More than ever, the Off stands out as a must-attend event, showcasing the diversity of contemporary art and the dynamic spirit of Arles.
(SAIF x LA KABINE 2024 Emerging Talent Award Winner)
Le Bois de la dauphine, by Elsa Beaumont
This photographic series is the second chapter of a long-term project within a grassroots solidarity collective based in the Cévennes region of southern France.
Since its founding in 1985, the collective has acquired abandoned buildings and transformed them into shelters for marginalized individuals. This work seeks to make visible the life paths that take shape and speak out on the edges of society.
“I also see in it the experimentation of an alternative form of freedom, invented by those rejected by the dominant model*, in places left behind because they are no longer profitable or exploitable.”
In 2020, the community took over a former mountain hotel, perched 1,560 meters up on Mont Aigoual: the Hôtel du Bois de la Dauphine. Built in 1907 for early mountain tourism, it fell into disuse for 30 years. In 1944, Resistance fighters found refuge there, only for it to be burned by retreating German troops. Rebuilt in the 1970s to host Perrier factory workers’ families on vacation, it was once again abandoned, then squatted, and again set on fire.
Today, seven people live there, in a massive concrete block of 2,230 m², spread across three floors and around sixty rooms. This brutalist UFO of a building, lost in wind-swept, rain-beaten mountains, feels suspended outside time and space.
Living here means isolation, no nearby towns, barely any transport. It’s a personal test, a retreat from the world, a radical need to step aside.
When Elsa photographs the place, she knows the people she sees might not be there next time. There’s a quiet sense of vanishing, of things slipping away, captured in the everyday fragments of this strange, in-between world.
As she photographs, the hotel’s massive presence contrasts with an almost weightless atmosphere, a mirage-like quality where layers of past and present lives emerge subtly. The tension between the vast, half-empty building and the few, scattered human figures becomes a central theme.
Stains, creases, objects, traces, fragile and poetic attempts to make this place a home. Elsa doesn't focus on individuals as subjects; they become part of a whole made of shapes, textures, light and shadow. Her perspective shifts, a wall corner, a fogged-up window, a half-seen body. Everything is part of a haunting visual puzzle.
Sometimes, figures appear lost in thought, gazing through misted glass that blurs the view outside. Her images float between interior and exterior, between shelter and exposure, a metaphor for how we exist in the world and how (or if) we belong.
Can this place truly welcome people, or does it always end up pushing them away?
Did its inhabitants choose the margins… or did the world push them there?
* Inspired by filmmaker Chris Marker’s words in Sans Soleil
This project was supported by the DRAC Occitanie.
Elsa Beaumont takes a deeply human, socially engaged approach to photography. Her long-term projects focus on the inner worlds and lived spaces of people excluded from the mainstream, crafting visual narratives where light and material meet with raw emotion.
Her work dismantles stereotypes, builds empathy, and invites us to see “the other” in all their complexity and beauty.
A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, Elsa has won the SAIF x La Kabine Emerging Talent Award, the Maison Blanche Prize, and received a special mention from the FOCALE Prize. She has been a finalist for both the Mentor and QPN awards.
Her photos have been widely exhibited across festivals, galleries and art centers including:
Galerie FOCALE (Nyon, Switzerland), Institut d’Art Contemporain (Le Vigan), Les Boutographies (Montpellier), Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs (Bordeaux), Festival QPN (Nantes), Festival 9PH (Lyon), Les Photographiques (Le Mans), Les Nuits Photographiques de Pierrevert, and Fisheye Gallery at the Salon de la Photo (Paris).
Her work is supported by the DRAC Occitanie, the Occitanie Region, and the Gard Department.