Huawei opened a gallery at the Rencontres d’Arles, the biggest photography festival of the world…and invited the famous New York portraitist Billy Kidd for an interactive exhibition. People who were admiring the work could also be part of it. Portraits of New Yorkers taken by Billy Kidd were displayed, with Huawei smartphones above them. Behind the scenes, the photographer could activate the smartphones remotely to take pictures of the audience’s reactions in front of its photos. These faces were then printed and displayed as well, in response to the portraits. They became part of the exhibit. The exhibition was designed and the smartphone were placed to get the best reactions, and to transform them into a piece of work. For the first time, the spectators of an exhibition were able to be part of the work. They also discovered that the Huawei Smartphone was able to compare with the best black and white cameras. With this innovation, the Huawei Gallery is the Rencontre d’Arles’ exhibition that has generated the bigger amount of conversations…and of media coverage. More than 10K were shared on line. And we got more than 90M impressions in social media. We had to convince people who are really involved in photography (photo lovers, journalists...), so we decided to catch them in Arles.
