Festival Photo de Bellême

ℹ️ Festival currently on hold. The last publicly documented edition of the Bellême Photo Festival took place in the summer of 2019. Its historical organizer, Pascal Quittemelle, had then announced that this edition would be the last of the Photographer of the Year Contest which structured the festival. Since then, the official website festivaldebelleme.com is no longer maintained (domain now squatted by unrelated content), the Espace Photo du Perche blog has not published any articles since March 2019, and no reliable public source mentions any subsequent edition. To date, no 2026 edition has been announced by the organizers.

A photo festival in the heart of the Norman Perche

For several summers, the Bellême Photo Festival transformed the medieval town into a true open-air gallery. Professional and amateur photographers took over the cobbled streets, parks, shop windows, and heritage sites of the commune — the ramparts, the porch, rue Ville Close — to offer visitors a free artistic stroll. The founding idea: to bring photography into the public space and make it accessible to everyone, without tickets or restricted hours, for a summer in the Perche.

The APPPF and the Photographer of the Year Contest

The festival was supported by the Espace Photo du Perche, located at 9 rue Ville Close in Bellême, in close collaboration with the APPPF (Agency for the Promotion of Professional Photography in France) based at 2 rue Saint-Jean in the same commune. This dual structure, founded and led by Pascal Quittemelle, publishing director of Profession Photographe magazine, also organized the Photographer of the Year Contest, created in 2008 and reserved for professional photographers. The contest winners were exhibited in Bellême each summer, making the festival a recognized event in the professional photography community.

A summer stroll in the medieval town

The photographic route extended throughout the entire city center of Bellême, classified as a Petite Cité de Caractère. Visitors could discover the exhibitions as they walked, from the fortified porch to the ramparts overlooking the national forest, passing through rue Ville Close and its private mansions. The festival was integrated into the tourist season of the Norman Perche and benefited from the support of local institutional partners (town hall, tourist office, Parc naturel régional du Perche).

The end of an adventure

In June 2019, during the last documented edition of the Photographer of the Year Contest, Pascal Quittemelle publicly announced that he wished to stop organizing the contest, a pillar of the festival. This announcement was reported in the specialized press (article by Stéphane Scotto dated June 12, 2019). Since then, the official website festivaldebelleme.com has ceased to be maintained and is now occupied by content unrelated to the festival, the Espace Photo du Perche blog has not received any new publications, and the Bellême Photo Festival no longer appears in the 2026 lists of major French photographic events (Montier-en-Der, La Gacilly, Visa pour l'Image, Rencontres d'Arles, Circulation(s), etc.). If a new edition were to be organized in the future, the information would probably be relayed by Profession Photographe magazine, the APPPF, or local institutions in the Perche.