The new edition of the Planches Contact Festival opens in Deauville under the sign of intimacy, a theme that echoes the very vocation of photography: capturing the invisible, revealing what unfolds behind appearances. The artistic direction is led by Lionel Charrier and Jonas Tebib. From the gaze turned toward oneself to the one directed at others, this edition explores the many forms of closeness, relationships, tensions, and silence—within private spaces as well as the landscape, in the body as much as in memory.

This year, the festival welcomes two major figures on the international photographic scene, presenting both a retrospective exhibition and a residency in Normandy: Arno Rafael Minkkinen, a master of the body-as-landscape, offers a visual meditation in which the nude becomes a vanishing line between self and world; and Lin Zhipeng (No. 223), a leading figure of new Chinese photography, unveils a joyful, erotic, and colorful intimacy captured over the course of his wanderings in Normandy.

Between established photographers and new voices, between stark black and white and sensuous chromaticism, the 2025 edition of the Planches Contact Festival composes a multifaceted narrative of intimacy, on a human scale—an invitation to step into the images as one would into a room, a landscape, or a confidence.

Guest artists exploring intimacy: Claude Cahun & Cindy Sherman; No. 223 (Lin Zhipeng); Renato D’Agostin; Myriam Boulos; Carline Bourdelas; Julien Magre; Anna Malagrida; Arno Rafael Minkkinen; Henrike Stahl; Frédéric Stucin
Young Photographic Creation Award: Jérémy Appert; Simon Bouillère; Naïma Lecomte; Anaïs Ondet
Guest artists supported by the photo4food foundation grant: Daniel Blaufuks; Adrien Boyer; Amélie Chassary; Marilia Destot