Perpignan Friday: Getty awards, parties, and an emotional anniversary slide show

After the inspiring but heart-wrenching conflict-photographers symposium
Friday morning, Getty presented slideshows of its five grantees for
editorial photography this year. I have mentioned the most recent three
before -- David Gillanders, Lynsey Addario, and Eugene Richards -- and I was already pretty familiar with their work. The two earlier grantees I wasn't familiar with, but very impressed by. Ian Martin's
biography reads like many photojournalists: after early awards for his
work, he started a wedding photography business to actually support
himself and his family. The project that won the Getty grant, on South
Africa's poor white communities, marks his re-entry to the
photojournalism world. Although Richards' film and photography series War Is Personal was the one that really brought tears to my eyes, Lorena Ros's
portraits of adults who were sexually abused as children certainly
softened me up (see above). The simple portraits are paired with images of the
spaces where the abuse took place or spaces that triggered those
memories, and both will eventually be joined by archival images of the
victims at the time of the abuse as well as audio interviews about
their experiences. Jean-Jacques seemed unimpressed, complaining that we
lack information about who the abusers were or what these people have
gone through -- but to me this is precisely why the project is so
powerful. It's not the abusers we should focus on, as the news media
too often has, but the victims whose lives have been irrevocably
scarred by the abuse. It's also important just to see these people and
recognize that they look just like anyone else -- considering that one
in four girls and one in seven boys are sexually abused before they
reach the age of 17, they undoubtedly look just like someone you know.