From September 2026 to September 2027, Arles, a city listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, will celebrate the bicentenary of the invention of photography.

This project has been awarded the “Bicentenary of Photography” label by the French Ministry of Culture and is part of the official Bicentenary programme, running from September 1, 2026, to September 30, 2027.

This celebration in Arles aims to explore, through a major city-wide exhibition and an expanded cultural programme, the deep connections between photographic images and the memory of places, through nearly 200 years of images of the city.

Invented almost simultaneously during the first half of the 19th century, photography and the systematic survey of France’s heritage share a common relationship with time: to record, preserve and transmit.

Download the full programme for the Arles Bicentenary of Photography (2026–2027)