Les Rencontres d’Arles 2026
Image: Mallory Lowe Mpoka, In the Weft of Memory (detail) [Dans la trame de la mémoire], Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa, 2025. Cotton weaving and glass beads. Courtesy of the artist.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Mallory Lowe Mpoka
Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles
Belgian-Cameroonian photographer Mallory Lowe Mpoka is the winner of the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles 2026, for her project Cosmologie des héritières. Photographs, weavings, video: this constellation of works, presented by the Montreal art centre Occurrence as part of the Prix Découverte Fondation Louis Roederer, explores the ever-shifting notion of identity. From the war waged by colonial France against the Bamileke independence fighters to the artist’s designation as the new matriarch of her clan, her installation links personal and collective history. "Drawing on fragmentary family archives, orally transmitted accounts and speculative projections, her practice examines the way in which images contribute to the formation of the self," explains curator Nadine Hounkpatin.
Image: Magali Paulin, Pavillon de l’Indochine, built for the Exposition coloniale de Nogent-sur-Marne de 1907. Jardin d’agronomie tropicale René-Dumont, Nogent-sur-Marne, juillet 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Magali Paulin
Prix Découverte Fondation Louis Roederer
Magali Paulin has beeen awarded the Prix Découverte Fondation Louis Roederer 2026 for her exhibition Matières, Fantômes presented by Doubledummy (Arles, France). In Paris, in a former colonial garden overgrown with vegetation, Magali Paulin photographs structures being reclaimed by time. Her images expose persistent traces and the histories embedded in these places. The Prix du Public has been awarded to Mallory Lowe Mpoka for her exhibition Cosmologie des héritières presented presented by Occurence (Montreal, Canada).
Image: Les Aygalades (detail), bacteriography, UV printing on glass, 2026. © Lara Tabet / BMW ART MAKERS
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lara Tabet and Yasmine Chemali
BMW ART MAKERS
Artist Lara Tabet and curator Yasmine Chemali are the winning duo of BMW ART MAKERS programme. They were chosen by the jury for their project Le corps vitré, a hybrid and organic project in which photography, living things and ecological thinking intertwine. Lara Tabet has been developing the technique of bacteriography for several years. The artist, who is also a medical biologist in her home country, Lebanon, collects water from rivers, harbours, streams and puddles, then allows the bacteria to act directly on photosensitive surfaces. In Marseille, where she now lives, her methodology takes on a new dimension as she collects samples in areas where the city blends into the natural landscape.
Image: Europastrasse, Otto Hainzl, Austria, 2025.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Europastrasse by Otto Hainzl
LUMA Rencontres Dummy Book Award
Europastrasse by Otto Hainzl has been awarded the LUMA Rencontres Dummy Book Award 2026. Austrian photographer Otto Hainzl works in Europe. His interest in us, our society defines his work. "Why does a society undertake the effort to build an ›Europastrasse‹? Most of these ›European Routes‹, stretch across our whole continent, sometimes beyond. Asking the question the other way round is even more intriguing: What does a construction like an ›Europa strasse‹ tell us about the society who built it?" Otto Hainzl
Images: Passports, Keisha Scarville, MACK, London, UK, 2026. Spirals, Juliette Pavy, Four Eyes éditions, Paris, France, 2025. Not a Cookbook, Robby Reis, TBW Books, Oakland (California), United States, 2025.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Prix du livre
The Prix du livre d’auteur, which recognises the best photography book showcasing a project by a contemporary photographer, was awarded to Passports by Keisha Scarville. The Prix du livre historique, which recognises the best documented work on photography or a photographer, whether thematic or monographic, was awarded toSpirals by Juliette Pavy. The Prix du livre photo-texte, which recognises the best book in which photographs and text contribute equally to the work, was awarded to Not a Cookbook by Robby Reis.
Prix James Barnor 2026
Image: Sabelo Mlangeni, Jenine, Kigoma, Lubumbashi, 2017, from the series
‘I Have Stopped Time’ A Family Portrait.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Sabelo Mlangeni
Prix James Barnor
South African photographer Sabelo Mlangeni is the winner of the Prix James Barnor 2026, awarded annually to artists from different regions of Africa. Mlangeni is driven by his interest in the notions of community and communing, sharing intimately in their thoughts, feelings, stories and everyday lives. His practice is a continuous survey of the most challenging, beautiful and confounding aspects of the human experience. At the same time, George Mahashe received a special mention for his work, which lies at the intersection of anthropology, archiving and artistic creation.
Prix Dior de la Photographie et des Arts Visuels pour Jeunes Talents 2026
Image: Threshold © Akari Takenobu
PHOTOGRAPHY
Akari Takenobu
Prix Dior de la Photographie et des Arts Visuels
pour Jeunes Talents
Akari Takenobu has been awarded the Prix Dior de la Photographie et des Arts Visuels pour Jeunes Talents 2026; with this year’s theme being ‘Face to Face’. The photographic medium remains central to Akari's work, engaging in a dialogue with collage and installation to complete what she calls "pseudo-experiments." After first photographing her own body to transform it into an image – thereby stripping it of its physicality – she then cuts the image into fragments, which she reassembles. By reconfiguring reality, Akari Takenobu questions the limits of perception and explores a meaningful interstice by blurring the boundary between the visible and the invisible.
About the Prix Dior de la Photographie et des Arts Visuels pour Jeunes Talents
Prix Jeudi des Beaux-Arts – CPGA 2026
Image: Héléna Fourmont, Rose Feu, 2026. Carving on fire-retardant wood, 114 x 74 cm.
ART
Héléna Fourmont
Prix Jeudi des Beaux-Arts – CPGA
À première vue is back this summer, giving galleries in Saint-Germain-des-Prés carte blanche to display in their windows the work of young graduates from the Beaux-Arts de Paris. At the opening, the Prix Jeudi des Beaux-Arts – CPGA was awarded to Héléna Fourmont in recognition of her work and her piece Rose Feu, on display through August 29 in the window of the Galerie Lara Vincy. At the intersection of painting, printmaking and carving, her work explores and reveals the hidden, inner life of certain materials, such as industrial wood. Héléna Fourmont works by removing material, thereby revealing certain traces hidden beneath the surface.
About the Prix Jeudi des Beaux-Arts – CPGA
Prix 6-24 / Prima
Image: Chloé Vanderstraeten, Embryon II, 2026. Coloured pencil and graphite on paper and steel, 28 x 35 x 8 cm. Courtesy of Prima.
ART
Chloé Vanderstraeten
Prix 6-24 / Prima
Chloé Vanderstraeten is the winner of the first edition of the Prix 6-24 / Prima, an award created by the Parisian gallery Prima, in partnership with 6-24 Holding, to support emerging contemporary artists. Born in 1996, Chloé Vanderstraeten lives and works in Paris. Her practice centers on drawing, paper and sculpture. Drawing upon scientific and architectural imagery, she constructs sensitive bodily envelopes that unfold within space, existing at the boundary between the body and architecture.
RIBA National Awards 2026
Image: Tuckey Design Studio, Rammed Earth House, Wiltshire, UK. Photo: Jim Stephenson.
ARCHITECTURE
RIBA National Awards
The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced the 32 winners of the National Awards 2026, with the majority located in London. Among the London-based projects is the transformation of Paddington Square led by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, a new dance theatre for Sadler's Wells by O'Donnell + Tuomey and an expansive university building for UCL by Stanton Williams. Elsewhere in England, a rammed earth house by Tuckey Design Studio in Wiltshire was named a winner, alongside an education and wellbeing hub by Okra set within an orchard in Hertfordshire. Two contemporary additions to the York Minster cathedral in Yorkshire completed by Tonkin Liu also made the list.
