The exhibition tours, book signings, symposia, projections, and awards that make the Rencontres d’Arles a mecca for photographers during the first week of July each year are finished, although the exhibition venues remain open through mid-September. “Arles in Black” was this year’s theme, and the poster [below, left] and communications program for the event was designed, as always, by the inimitable Michel Bouvet.

It’s a great tribute to the organizers to have created a brand awareness program via the imagination of a single designer. Starting in 2002, Bouvet has been charged with the task of embedding the Recontres in the memory of people in Arles and around the world. François Hébel, director of the Rencontres, said that Bouvet’s mad-cap designs, of carrots or rhinos or cats, which are placed just about everywhere in town, from bus shelters to coffee mugs, make taxi drivers and shop keepers scratch their heads. “But, in fact,” Hebel says, “what looked like being a total failure as far as the message was concerned turned out to be a marvelous topic of conversation and a good way of creating the buzz. So we decided to dig ourselves deeper into the absurd.” Information/Rencontres.

See for yourself:

Michel Bouvet
Born in 1955 in Tunis. Lives and works in Paris. After studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (painting department), Michel Bouvet very quickly turned to posters. His work as a poster designer and graphic artist was mainly for cultural events (theatre, opera, music, dance, museums, festivals), institutional affairs (local authorities, public institutions), or publishers. As such he has had more than seventy one-man shows in thirty countries across the world. He has received many awards from most of the great international poster biennials. He has also been frequently invited to them as a jury member. In France he was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Affiche Culturelle at theBibliothèque nationale de France in 1987 and in 1992. He teaches at the ESAG / Penninghen, Paris, and is a member of the International Graphic Alliance. He is exhibition curator for the Mois du graphisme (Month of Graphics) at Échirolles, France.