Toxic futures, dark pasts and happy green dreams

"Are you sure?" asks a man climbing the stairs before I descend into Arles's ancient cryptoporticus. Below, Sophie Calle's exhibition neither give or throw away awaits. It's one of the headline shows at this year's Rencontres d'Arles photography festival, but I understand the worried passerby's point. It's eerie down here in the subterranean chambers, the half-light permeated only by the stagnant smell of subterranean dampness, and pools of sepia water pool on the dirt floor.

I've walked into a funeral for photographs-a final farewell to Calle's ill-fated series The Blind, when in 1986 the French artist interviewed people attending a ...