The international photojournalism festival Visa pour l'image presented its 34th edition on Monday, scheduled from August 27 to September 11 in Perpignan and attached, as always, to "show the news of the world" in addition to the dominant theme of the moment. “Unfortunately, the world continues outside of Ukraine ... things are happening all over the planet that, because of Ukraine, we don't talk about anymore. And we are committed to showing the news of the world as a whole,” Jean-François Leroy, founder of the festival in 1989, told AFP.
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From the endless Afghan war as seen by Andrew Quilty of the VU agency, to the Burmese rebels as seen by Siegfried Modola, and from the environmental apocalypse documented by Alain Ernoult, to the impact of industrial fishing shown by George Steinmetz , 25 exhibitions are on the program.
Like the Covid-19 pandemic last year, the war in Ukraine, which "rumbles for eight years at the gates of Europe", recalls Jean-François Leroy, obviously could not be absent from Visa. The exhibition by Sergei Supinsky, from Agence France-Presse, which documented the Soviet republic, then independence, the Maidan revolution in 2014, the Orange revolution, etc. allows us to recontextualize today's conflict.
The festival will also count among its guests Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka, the last journalists to have covered the blockade of Mariupol for the Associated Press (AP) and exfiltrated in March by the doctors of the hospital of this devastated city under the Russian bombardments.
"As every year, there are lots of favorites: photographers who come back because when they do interesting things, we welcome them (...) and discoveries", added the director of Visa , citing in particular the young Lebanese photographer Tamara Saade, who shows Beirut since the explosion of August 4, 2020 and the crisis in which her country sank.
Six screening evenings are also planned, as well as debates, conferences, meetings with photographers. The various prizes, which reward the best reports of the past year, will be awarded from August 31, culminating in the Visa d'or News on September 3.
And after two years impacted by the Covid, “we hope to find a really normal festival with the disappearance of quarantines, masks (…) and that makes us happy!”, Concluded Jean-François Leroy.
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