Visa founder lambasts agencies
As the city of Perpignan prepares to welcome the world elite to its annual photojournalism festival, Visa pour l'Image, its famously outspoken director has hit out at the media and photo agencies for their role in bringing down the industry. Olivier Laurent reports
Guatemala Ciudad, 13 December 2008 at 10.45pm, Santiago C, 15, arrived at the emergency room after being shot. He died on arrival in his father’s arms. An alleged Mara member, he was a victim in the ongoing gang war © Miquel Dewever-Plana / Vu.
Jean-Francois Leroy, founder and director of Visa pour l'Image, an annual festival dedicated to contemporary photojournalism, has attacked photo agencies for 'digging the profession's grave' by offering the media heavily discounted subscription schemes.
An arch-critic of newspapers' reluctance to publish or commission journalistic photo-essays, he claims discounting is only making the situation worse for photographers, who he says are finding the industry increasingly unsustainable.
'Many agencies now have flat-rate schemes offering attractive prospects for magazines and newspapers run by people whose only goal is profit,' says Leroy. 'By offering these subscription schemes, they are digging this profession's tomb. We scarcely need to cite the case of picture desks of magazines with the same profit-driven management demands, and which use amateur photo websites, paying one or two euros a shot.'
These different practices, says Leroy, are becoming more widespread, and as a result, photojournalists are finding it almost impossible to fund more demanding, investigative stories. 'This year, I can count less than a dozen photographers who have gone on a magazine assignment to do a real news report, allowing the photographer to make a living from his work and pay his bills at the end of the month,' says Leroy.
The scarcity of such work has made it difficult to prepare this year's festival exhibitions, he says - the first time he's had such a problem in 21 years.
Last week he unveiled the preliminary line-up, announcing 11 of the 30 exhibitions he has planned to stage at the end-of-summer event in Perpignan in southern France.
These shows include In Whose Name? by Magnum photographer Abbas - a seven-year project presenting contact sheets, work prints, mock-up layouts and covers of the Iranian's work shot around Islamic countries after 9/11. Alexandra Avakian of Contact Press Images also focuses on the Muslim world. She spent eight weeks with Hezbollah, cheated death in Somalia and lived for two years in Gaza as part of her two-decade Windows of the Soul venture.
And away from the headlines, Agence Vu photographer Miquel Dewerer-Plana has spent months covering 'the other war' in Guatemala. In 2008, 6292 people were murdered in the Central American country, making it one of the most violent in the world. Jerome Sessini, a Oeil Public photographer on assignment for Le Monde 2 and Le Figaro magazine, will show his So far from God, too close to the USA project, which looks at the violent gang war that is being waged a few miles away from US borders. The photographer spent three months in Culiacan, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, reporting on what the Mexicans call the 'narco insurrection'.
The festival will also host multimedia projects for the first time. 'We're not doing it because it's fashionable, but because it's about photographers' survival,' says Leroy.
Visa pour l'Image will present a series of evening shows dedicated to the past year's main news events.
Professional Week runs 31 August to 06 September. For more details, visit visapourlimage.com.
On show
The festival will take place from 29 August until 13 September in Perpignan, France. The professional week, which sees hundreds of photojournalists converge on the old city's centre, will start on 31 August.
Abbas (Magnum Photos) - In Whose Name?
Alexandra Avakian (Contact Press Images) - Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World
Francoise Demulder - Tribute
Miquel Dewerer-Plana (Vu) - The Other War
Brenda Ann Kenneally (Canon Female Photojournalist Award) - Upstate Girls, What Became of Collar City
Brennan Linsley (Associated Press) - Guantanamo
Pascal Maitre (Cosmos) - Somalia, Abandoned by All
Steve McCurry (Magnum) - The Unguarded Moment
Jerome Sessini (Oeil Public) - So far from God, too close to the USA
Callie Shell (Time Magazine/Aurora Photos) - Barack Obama
Zalmai - Promises and Lies, The Human Cost of the War on Terror.
