Friday Round Up - 29th August, 2014

This week Friday Round Up celebrates the 26th Visa pour l'image International Festival for Photojournalism which starts in Perpignan, France on Monday 1st September. In Part One of our coverage we preview the exhibitions on show this year. Part Two will be published next Friday and features interviews with Vlad Sokhin about his book Crying Meri, which launches at Visa, and also with photo-media specialist Samuel Bollendorf. Plus the winners of the Visa awards and Getty Grants.

Also, for those who are in Sydney this weekend, three exhibitions open at the Australian Centre for Photography. Presented in association with Reportage Projects 2014 are Jodi Bieber's Between Darkness & Light; Ashley Gilbertson's Bedrooms of the Fallen; and Poppy - Trails of Afghan Heroin by Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong. For more information visit the Reportage site. 

Festival:
Visa pour l’Image – Part One
Alison Stieven-Taylor

This time last year I was winging my way to Perpignan from Melbourne via Doha and Paris, for the 25th instalment of Visa pour l’image, the international photojournalism festival. This year unfortunately I won’t be attending, but with all the photographers who have kindly offered to “have a drink, or several, for me at La Poste” I’ll be facing a very big ‘virtual’ hangover! Thanks everyone :-)

Perpignan (C) Alison Stieven-Taylor 2013

The professional week of Visa kicks off on Monday 1st September and once again hundreds of photojournalists, along with photo editors, agencies and other industry professionals will descend on Perpignan, in the south of France. This picturesque town gets behind the Festival each year showing extraordinary support for the event and visitors could be forgiven for thinking its name is Visa not Perpignan.

Evening screenings draw large crowds (C) Mazen Saggar

Once again festival director, and creator, Jean-François Leroy and his team have put together a comprehensive program of exhibitions, evening screenings and talks that capture the breadth of work photojournalists are undertaking around the world. Admission to the exhibitions is free throughout the two weeks of the Festival, but exhibitions stay up for a further fortnight allowing school groups to also visit and learn about the important role of photography in bearing witness. Last year more than 8000 students from France and Spain attended.

(C) Alison Stieven-Taylor 2013

The Palais des Congres (above) is the business hub of Visa. It is where seminars and talks are held, where the busy festival and press offices are and where major sponsor Canon is housed. Many of the major agencies are here also including Getty Images. Each day of the professional week, on the top floor of Palais des Congres, agencies and editors meet with photojournalists who have an unprecedented opportunity to show their work and gain critical feedback. Over copious cups of espresso deals are done, old acquaintances renewed and new friends made. Once the doors are closed at the Palais des Congres everyone adjourns to La Poste where conversations last well into the early hours.

Exhibitions:
While there continues to be discussion around the future of photojournalism in its traditional context, the exhibitions presented at Visa remind us that without the work of these courageous, insightful and ultimately talented photojournalists, many of these stories would not be told. And those without means to communicate to the rest of the world will remain silent.

The Photographers in the North
This exhibition, the brainchild of photojournalist Patrick Chauvel, showcases the work of the Vietnamese soldiers who became photographers during the Vietnam War and presents images rarely seen. 

Chu Chi

Chu Chi

Doan Cong

Doan Cong

Hua Kiem

Hua Kiem

Mai Nam

Mai Nam

Typhoon in the Philippines: 

AFP, Leading in the Wake of Haiyan 

© Philippe Lopez

© Noel Celis
Football as seen through the eyes of children 

in Cidade de deus Favela
Christophe Simon AFP chief photographer, Brazil 

Amateurs Make the Front Page
30 Pictures that have not changed photojournalism
Curated by photographer Samuel Bollendorff in partnership with sociologist André Gunthert, this exhibition looks at the amateur pictures, from 2001 to now, that made the front pages. My interview with Samuel will be published on Photojournalism Now next week. 

Bruno Amsellem (Signatures) 

Rohingyas, A Silenced Minority (Burma) 

Mary F. Calvert (Zuma Press)
The Battle Within: Sexual Assault in America’s Military 

William Daniels (Panos Pictures)
Train for the Forgotten - Russia (for National Geographic) 

This train travels through Russia providing medical services for those who live in the most remote parts of the country.

Guillaume Herbaut (Institute)
Ukraine, From Independence Square to the Donbas 

Yunghi Kim (Contact Press Images)
Africa, The Long Road Home: 

From Famine to Reconciliation
1992-1996 

Olivier Laban-Mattei (The Mongolian Project/MYOP)
Mongolia – There is no El Dorado 

Sebastián Liste (NOOR)  
On the Inside of a Venezuelan Prison Controlled by Inmates 

For Time Magazine & Fotopres 

Klaus Nigge (National Geographic)
The Bald Eagle in the Aleutian Islands 

Ian Parry Scholarship
Exhibition of works by scholarship winners 
and patron Don McCullin 

Adrian Fussell Winner 2012 

Rasel Chowdury Winner 2011

Anne Rearick (Agence VU’)
South Africa – Chronicles of a Township 

Jorge Silva (Reuters)
The Skyscraper Slum Caracas

Sean Sutton (MAG/Panos Pictures)
The Eye of the Storm (Philippines) 

Pierre Terdjman
Central African Republic 

Gaël Turine (Agence VU’)
The Wall of Fear (Bangladesh) 

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala (Reportage by Getty Images)
Stories of a Wounded Land 

(The effects of agribusiness in Latin America) 

Michaël Zumstein (Agence VU’)  
Terror and Tears in The Central African Republic

For Le Monde

Tributes to fallen photojournalists:

Chris Hondros (Getty Images)
Testament

Anja Niedringhaus (AP)
A Tribute 

Transmission Series 
Apart from the amazing breadth of exhibitions, one of the highlights of Visa is the Transmission Series, which this year will be run by photographer Christopher Morris. Transmission is designed to share the collective wisdom of experienced photojournalists and photo editors with emerging photojournalists. Morris will be joined by MaryAnne Golon, director of photography at The Washington Post, Jérôme Delay Associated Press’ chief photographer in Africa, photographers Yuri Kozyrev and Sebastián Liste from NOOR and Peter Bouckaert, director of Human Rights Watch. What a fantastic line up.

To find out more about Visa pour l'Image visit the website here.