Ctrl.: Nouvelles Fonctions des Images

Ausstellung – Exhibition

06. 07. 2026 – 04. 10. 2026
École nationale supérieure de la photographie Arles

The photograph you are looking at is a decoy.

As you observe it, others are probably looking at it too — on other screens, in other countries, in other forms. It knows you are watching it. It is analyzed by machines, encoded into an algorithm that uses it for other purposes. Other information is encrypted within its pixel structure. It is not alone; it is connected to other images, it helps generate new ones, and together they shape our perception of reality. Photography has freed itself from its role of representation, which now serves only to conceal the control it exerts over our gaze.

What it depicts has now become secondary.

What should we do with these new images ? The exhibition Ctrl. brings together artists and works that are interested in how images operate, rather than what they show. Like a camera dropped onto the ground, we see the shattered insides of the device: its mechanisms, its data, its machinery. It invites us to contemplate the backstage through which images endlessly pass. This exhibition is part of the Bicentenary of Photography program. It is the first chapter of a project exploring the future of the school, which will focus on its history in 2027.