Rencontres d'Arles 2025: David Armstrong, the underground in the spotlight

On the occasion of the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles , which will be held from July 7 to October 5, 2025, "Libération" is giving pride of place to photography. Find the special issue "Libé des photographes" on newsstands on July 12, 13 and 14 or in its digital version .

In the dark rooms of the Luma Tower lies a treasure: the photographs of David Armstrong, a childhood friend of Nan Goldin . Found on a farm ten years ago, just after the photographer's death in 2014, this work is staged by the painter Wade Guyton, who now oversees the photographer's estate . Following a chronological order, the exhibition begins in the mid-1970s in Boston, where a friendship was born between a small group of artists at the Museum of Fine Arts school, a group of friends who would later be called the Boston School. David Armstrong then photographed his loved ones, his friends, his lovers, particularly in Provincetown, a village at the tip of Cape Cod (Massachusetts), where students met to spend quality time in the great outdoors. The sensuality that makes David Armstrong's signature distinctive is later found in black and white portraits, in 6x6 format, many of them taken in New York.

Among these superb photographs, we recognize familiar faces, that of Nan Goldin, so young, or that of Cookie Mueller, their dazzling friend, heroine of the American counter-culture. On large tables, the contact sheets are displayed under glass, which suddenly makes these moments of intimacy and exchange that are the shots lively and melancholic. In a separate room, Night and Day , a color slideshow, displays photographs taken on Kodachrome film. At the beach, at parties or in cars, the underground is captured raw by the erotic lens of David Armstrong. Canon.