|
Salvador Dali once pronounced Perpignan, in southern France, as the centre of the universe. For photojournalists who make the annual pilgrimage to Visa pour l’image, the world’s most important festival of photojournalism, Dali’s statement certainly holds true.
Perpignan itself is a medieval town with about 100,000 residents, about five hours from Paris by high-speed train. Located at the foothills of the Pyrenees not far from the Mediterranean, the city has a distinctly Catalonian feel. In fact, the Spanish border is only 50 kilometres away.
The Pro Week of the 21st Visa pour l’image kicked off on 31 July this year, and one of the festival’s drawcards is the opportunity for freelancers to show their portfolios to photo editors and hopefully sell some stories.
After arriving in Perpignan, everyone heads to pick up their accreditation at Hotel Pams, a grandiose, but now defunct 18th century hotel that houses the Visa pour l’image management and press offices during the festival. Everyone – including the Charby, the press office dog – is issued with a credit card-sized name tag that states whether the owner is a photographer, a member of the press, an agency, a sponsor, an institution or staff. In previous years, the different occupations were distinguished by a coloured strip – red for photographers, burgundy for agencies, blue for press and so on.
Although the strip was replaced by text this year, hungry freelancers such as myself spend an inordinate amount of time peering at name tags to see whether the owner might be from an high-profile publication such as National Geographic, Stern, Paris Match or The New York Times.
Hard Times
Photo editors are usually found in the courtyard at Hotel Pams or on the balcony of the seventh floor of the Palais des Congres. Photography agency booths are on the second floor of the exposition centre. You can often spot photo editors looking through a freelancer’s work on a laptop or in the printed form while others mill about awaiting their turn. Some editors, such as Harold Menk from the German pictorial Stern, are booked out for the whole week, with appointments made as early as March.
The impression I gained from meetings during this week was that things are grim for the majority of publications and agencies. An editor from Gruner + Jahr which publishes such titles as the Stern, Geo and Brigitte magazines lamented that the company has been ordered to save EUR 25 million before year’s end. Many magazines said, almost immediately, that unlike previous years, they weren’t buying stories and, what’s more, they couldn’t afford to do so. Agencies complained that the floor space was emptier than ever before. Frankly, the industry looks in bad shape.
On the other hand, the exhibitions told a different story. Work of a high quality is still being produced and, judging by the number of viewers at these exhibitions, people (and not just photographers) still want to see this work. Tellingly though, 85 percent of the images exhibited at Visa are unpublished.
On Show
It’s always best to view the exhibitions at the beginning of Pro Week. The photo editors start to arrive on Wednesday (the third day) which gives photographers a chance to wander the narrow, winding cobblestoned streets at their leisure and see some of the best photojournalism in the world.
The exhibitions themselves are displayed in ancient buildings, the most impressive of which is a 15th century cathedral, the Eglise des Dominicains.
One of the exhibition highlights of this year’s festival was an intimate glimpse into the rise of Barack Obama – a three-year project by Time magazine contract photographer Callie Shell. At the beginning of the series Shell’s subject addresses community hall audiences of less than 100 while his travelling entourage consists of only his driver and his photographer. To her credit, Shell has managed to become a seemingly invisible observer as her subject becomes a modern phenomenon, fronting crowds of up to 150,000 on his way to becoming the president of the USA. The most memorable images, however, are of the rare private, tender moments with his wife and daughters, or quirky scenes such as the president-elect doing some chin-ups backstage before giving a speech.
The evening’s main event at Visa pour l’image are the screenings which take place on two open-air cinema screens – one at Campo Santo in front the 500-year-old Cathédrale Jean-Baptiste, the other at the near-by Place de la République which takes the spill-over from the 2650-seat amphitheatre. The evening screenings usually begin with a news review of the previous year. On the Wednesday evening, the focus was put on January and February 2009. Brutal images of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and unrest in Madagascar vied for attention. The recap of major events is usually followed by an awards presentation. Wednesday saw the presentation of a new award for best Web documentary report which was accepted by the team from the French newspaper Le Monde for its multimedia piece on incarceration.
This brought us to a diverse series of photo essays – 14 of them set to music with a run time of about three minutes. Each series comes with an introduction spoken in French, although earpieces with live translations are available for non-French speakers.
|