edition #16
18th October 2025
4th January 2026
Planches Contact Festival, a unique festival of photographic creation in residence
the festival
Deauville has a long-standing and intimate relationship with images. From the early days of photography to the visual explorations of contemporary artists, the town has always been a source of inspiration: its streets, beach, light and landscapes make it a living backdrop, an open-air creative space. Planches Contact is the most vibrant expression of this relationship. A festival based on the principle of artistic residency, it has had a clear ambition for over fifteen years: to make Deauville a place where photography is not only viewed, but also thought about, constructed and experienced. Each year, established and emerging artists are invited to take a unique look at our region, to question its identity and reveal unexpected facets. Their creative freedom is our greatest asset.
Mayor of Deauville & President of Les Franciscaines
editorial
The new edition of Planches Contact Festival opens in Deauville under the banner of intimacy, a theme that resonates with the very vocation of photography: capturing the invisible, revealing what lies behind appearances. From the gaze turned inward to that turned toward others, this edition explores the multiple forms of closeness, relationships, tensions, and silence—in private spaces as well as in the landscape, in the body as well as in memory.
This year, the festival welcomes two major figures from the international photography scene, with both a retrospective exhibition and a residency in Normandy:
Arno Rafael Minkkinen, master of the body-landscape, delivers a visual meditation in which the naked body becomes a vanishing line between the self and the world.
Lin Zhipeng (No. 223), a leading figure in contemporary Chinese photography, reveals a joyful, erotic and colourful intimacy captured during his wanderings in Normandy.
Between established photographers and new voices, between radical black and white and sensual chromaticism, the 2025 edition of the Planches Contact Festival composes a multifaceted narrative of intimacy, on a human scale. An invitation to enter the images as if entering a room, a landscape or a private conversation.
Jonas Tebib & Lionel Charrier
Artistic direction of the festival
Support for photographers from the inception of the project to the development of exhibitions
programming
invited project
An imaginary dialogue
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Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, although separated by time and cultural contexts, share an artistic approach based on self-staging and a profound questioning of the notion of identity and intimacy.
A surrealist photographer and writer born in Nantes in 1894 and died in Jersey in 1954, Claude Cahun was a pioneer of self-portraiture. A militant and avant-garde artist, she explored questions of identity and gender by staging herself in multiple forms, mixing cross-dressing and ambiguity, blurring the boundaries between masculine and feminine.
An American photographer and visual artist born in New Jersey in 1954, Cindy Sherman explores identity, gender and social roles through fictional self-portraits. Through cross-dressing and staging, she deconstructs social and cultural stereotypes, creating characters that question the norms and expectations imposed by society.
residence outside the walls
Intimacy – Body and Territory
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As part of the festival, photographer Myriam Boulos is conducting a creative residency based on this year's theme: intimacy. Produced outside the walls of the festival, from Beirut, this work is a continuation of her committed work on Lebanese youth, which she has been documenting for several years through a sensitive exploration of intimate life in a territory marked by omnipresent war.
The exhibition will present these previously unseen images alongside a selection of photographs from her monographic book What's our, which also explores the theme of intimacy.
Guest artists in residence
Eros and intimacy
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Lin Zhipeng, known as No. 223, accurately captures contemporary urban youth through spontaneous, intimate and sensual photographs. His provocative yet delicate gaze captures a generation in search of emancipation, love and freedom.
Reflets d’elle – Intimacy and literature
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Carline Bourdelas' photographic work delicately and poetically explores the states of the human soul. Through her images, she tackles themes such as loneliness, silence, childhood and femininity with great sensitivity.
The Architecture of Emotions – Graphic Intimacy
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Renato D'Agostin has developed a unique approach to photography based on the very substance of the image: its grain, texture and density. Each print thus becomes a sensitive object, conveying an intimate narrative.
Madame S. – Intimacy and correspondence
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For more than twenty years, Julien Magre has been poetically exploring the contours of intimacy, particularly through images of his family life. An intimacy that is constantly evolving, shaped by the passing of time.
Intimacy and infinity
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A conceptual and experimental artist, Anna explores the boundaries between photography and video, between urban space and landscape. She questions fundamental oppositions — interior/exterior, light/darkness, transparency/opacity — to better reveal areas of ambiguity.
Intimacy in the landscape
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A photographer renowned for his unique and introspective work, Arno Rafael Minkkinen has been exploring themes of identity, the body and the profound relationship between humans and nature for over fifty years. His work, rooted in a black-and-white film aesthetic, is distinguished by the recurring use of his own body, integrated or concealed in the landscape, in constant interaction with the natural elements.
La Belle aux Bois normand – Myths and intimacy
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Henrike Stahl unfolds a rich and abundant photographic universe. For this residency, she has chosen to take up the myth of the princess, anchoring it in contemporary reality. Living for a time in the outbuilding of an old castle in Normandy, she became interested in the castle owners of today, seeking out their modern faces.
Cabaret – Intimacy and identity
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From the famous Cancan – soon to be listed as part of France's national intangible cultural heritage – to cabarets campaigning for LGBTQIA+ rights and the contemporary drag scene, cabaret has remained a space of freedom, subversion and creativity deeply rooted in French culture since the 19th century. A place of performance, transgression and conviviality, it continues to embody a theatre of possibilities.
We believe in what young photographers have to say, to show and to invent, and we give them the means to do so.
Young Photographic Creation Award
Since its inception in 2010, the festival has demonstrated a strong commitment to young photographers. Each year, following a call for entries, several artists are selected by the festival jury to develop a new project related to the Normandy region. They receive support throughout the process and benefit from conditions conducive to research, creation and production. Their works are then presented as part of the festival and compete for the Jury Prize and the Audience Prize, which are awarded in the autumn.
The winners of the Young Photographic Creation Award
NEXUS
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The muscular body as an injunction to conform to one's self-image. Long considered uncool, the gym is now a place that attracts an increasingly diverse audience. A theatre of self-construction, but also of social interaction, Jérémy turns his gaze to these spaces where leisure, dreams, frustrations, pleasure and pain intersect.
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Attracted by the world of amateur football, Simon decided to work on the cultural and social impact of a region that saw the birth of France's first football club in Le Havre. From small-town football pitches to the Meinau stadium, his photographic work will focus on this popular and unifying local activity.
What borders
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Motivated by a desire to discover, understand and share different perspectives on life. Naïma decided to explore Normandy by following the region's iconic river, which begins inland and ends its journey on the coast, marking the boundary between Trouville and Deauville: the Touques.
Les filles du coin
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The rural world and the territories in between are at the heart of Anaïs' work. Les filles du coin is a documentary project that focuses on young girls who live neither in big cities nor completely in the countryside. It is a photographic exploration of the daily lives of these teenagers as they try to forge an identity for themselves in these interstitial areas and think about building a future.
The Jury for the Young Photographic Creation Award
Rima Abdul Malak – President of the jury
"I am delighted to chair the jury of the Planches Contact Festival, which will award the Young Photographer Award.
This award is much more than a prize: it is a residency, long-term support and collective inspiration. Above all, it is a vote of confidence in the younger generation, an absolute belief in the fresh perspectives they have to offer.
These young talents are the most beautiful promise we have for the future: that of a world that will preserve our sensitivity, the power of the unexpected, the uniqueness of each experience, and the depth of our humanity."
Rima Abdul Malak
The members of the jury
Alongside Rima Abdul Malak, Philippe Augier, Babeth Djian, Édouard Carmignac, Lionel Charrier, Thierry Grillet, Alain Genestar, Marin Karmitz, Anne Lacoste, Nicolas Jimenez and Jonas Tebib, the festival jury welcomes three new members: Philippe Guionie, director of Villa Pérochon, Caroline Stein, curator of the Neuflize collection, and Cécile Trunet-Favre, director of communications, public affairs and cultural activities at Fnac-Darty.
the young photographic talent award
The Young Photographic Creation Award, supported by Fnac for the past three years, is gaining momentum this year.
The winner of the Jury Prize will now benefit from a residency at the Villa Pérochon, Centre d’art Contemporain Photographique de Niort, while the InCadaqués festival is extending its commitment by presenting, in autumn 2025, an exhibition by Cloé Harent (winner of the 2024 Jury Prize) created following her residency in Spain.
applications
Applications for the 2026 Young Photographic Talent Award will be open from 24 October to 15 December 2025.
The grant amounts to €6,000 for the realisation of the project and the exhibition, in addition to the residency.
Exhibitions take over Deauville, from the seafront to the sumptuous setting of Les Franciscaines, from October to December.
Bursary photo4food
Since 2020, the partnership with the festival has enriched the programme each year by welcoming new photographers in residence.
In addition, an auction of works donated by the foundation's photographers and other photographers participating in the festival is regularly organised during the opening weekend, with proceeds going to a local charity.
The winners of the photo4food bursary
Journal de Normandie
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A multidisciplinary artist, he explores memory through photography and video, with links to history and literature. His work addresses themes such as the Holocaust and colonialism. He has received several awards for his books, films and exhibitions.
A balcony overlooking infinity
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Influenced by surrealism and straight photography, his gaze is characterised by an ambivalence between intuition and reflection that questions the meaning of appearances and our perception of reality.
Like a silk flower, lace is born
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Blending photography and painting in a poetic and ecological approach to nature, her compositions of flowers, fruits and landscapes evoke living paintings and celebrate the beauty of reality.
Memoryscapes: the memory of landscapes, the landscapes of memory
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Exploring memory, time and intimacy through a poetic and sensitive approach, she combines photography, collage and manual manipulation to create fragmented narratives between family archives, landscapes and bodies. Her works question the fragility of the world and the ephemeral beauty of existence.
Art serving others
The photo4food foundation, created by Olivier and Virginie Goy and hosted by the Institut de France, aims to fund meals for the most disadvantaged through the sale of photographs donated by artists and public donations. At the same time, the foundation promotes these artists by showcasing their work to a large community of enthusiasts and buyers, particularly through the organisation of exhibitions.
This partnership embodies how photography can become a driving force for solidarity, supporting both artistic creation and concrete actions to help the most vulnerable.
The Jury
The photo4food jury is composed of: Arnaud Adida, Akrame Benallal, Simon Brodbeck, Lucie de Barbuat, Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, Isabelle Juy, and Jonas Tebib.
15 years of the festival, 170 artists exhibited. 78 days of exhibition, over 600 works exhibited in 2024, and thousands of visitors every year.
Past, present, future
Deauville loves photographers
Since the festival was founded in 2010, more than 170 photographers have visited Deauville and the Normandy region over the past 15 years, including Peter Lindbergh, Martin Parr, George Rousse, Peter Knapp, Massimo Vitali, Paolo Woods, Paolo Roversi, Joakim Eskildsen and Harry Gruyaert.
edition 16th#
Exhibitions
18 October 2025 – 4 January 2026
Opening days
24–26 October 2025
La 25e Heure Longines photo competition
25th October 2025
