The Opening Weekend of 2019 Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival from Nov 22-25 welcomes photography lovers with a range of events and activities: exhibition tours guided by artists and curators, book signings, seminars, workshops, and cultural performances.

Taking place in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province, this year's program presents 30 exhibitions and 55 artists from China, including Taiwan, France, the UK, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Sri Lanka, the US and India.

The festival also promotes Chinese talents on an international scale, with its Discovery Award presented in Arles every year. This year the event will also hold Jimei x Arles Women Photographers Award, the first-ever photo award in China dedicated to women photographers.

The 2019 event marks the fifth time for the Les Rencontres d'Arles in France, equivalent to the Cannes International Film Festival in the photography world, to join hands with Jimei district in Xiamen, with a view to offering a golden chance for photography buffs to enjoy works from across the globe.

Local authorities said the photography festival is a significant vehicle for Sino-France cultural exchanges, and it offers an excellent opportunity for the Jimei district, a residential and business area in the city that promotes a high-quality lifestyle and is an integral part of Xiamen's position as a "scenic and culturally profound city".

They also said the four earlier sessions of the Jimei Arles International Photography Festival were of great significance for the district to demonstrate its cultural appeal and promote its urban cultural industries.

Cocreated by Chinese pioneer photographer Rong Rong, founder of China's first photography museum Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and Sam Stourdze?, director of Rencontres d'Arles (France), Jimei x Arles has become a must-see event for photo lovers in China, and attracted more than 230,000 visitors in the previous years (70,000 in 2018).

Influential figures of the Chinese art world are consultants for the 2019 edition of the festival: Gu Zheng (independent art historian and critic), Huang Rui (artist), Li Ge (chairman of the Chinese Photographers Association), Tang Xin (director of Taikang Space, Beijing), Philip Tinari (director of UCCA, Beijing), Wan Jie (chairman and president of Artron Art Group).

The festival will have two main sites around Xiamen's Jimei district this year: Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre and Jimei Citizen Square Main Exhibition Hall. Xiamen, formerly known as Amoy, a coastal city located across the Taiwan straits, has been an important port for centuries, famous with tourists for the colonial-era Gulangyu island, and now a vibrant and modern city that has become home to China's independent fashion scene.

Local Action, a special sub-exhibition of the festival, explores the links between photography and the local environment. This year, Magnum veteran Guy Le Querrec brings The Chinese Gesture, a series of photos he took during his voyages in China in the 1980s.

The exhibition shows Guy Le Querrec's unique perspective on a transitioning China, in 70 shots of large cities – Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai Suzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xiamen, Quanzhou, and the countryside of Fujian province.

Every year, Jimei x Arles focuses on the photographic scene of an Asian country. After South Korea (2018) and Indonesia (2017), this year Jimei x Arles invites India, with exhibitions curated by Indian photography specialists and produced in partnership with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts (New Delhi) and the Museum of Art & Photography (Bangalore).

The contemporary work on display is shown alongside a range of early colonial photography on the subcontinent, from which much of it departs, forming a dialogue between the past and present, and revealing some of the influences of 21st-century practice.

Eight exhibitions were shown during the summer at Rencontres d'Arles travel to Jimei x Arles, including:

Tom Wood Mothers, Daughters, Sisters

Philippe Chancel Datazone

Evangelia Kranioti The Living, The Dead, and Those at Sea

Clergue & Weston First Show, First Works

The Anonymous Project The House

The Saga of Inventions - From the Gas Mask to the Washing Machine CNRS Archives

Mate? Bartha Kontakt

The 2019 Arles Book Awards

If you go:

10:00-17:30, Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Center and Jimei Citizen Square Exhibition Hall, Jimei district, Xiamen.

Ticket: 60 yuan ($8.5), 30 yuan ($4.3 for students, teachers, and military personnel)