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| © Tyler Hicks/The New York Times |
Abdul Hussain returns to his vandalized village of Shebertoo, Afghanistan, after the Taliban's ouster. He had left his home when the Taliban took control of the village during its rise to power. On his return, he had no money, faced a cold winter with little food, and feared his sick two-year-old son would soon die.
Click photo for more images from Visa pour l'Image. |
The Visa Pour L'image Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France, has long been oriented toward tough reportage, as opposed to celebrity journalism. "We were always anti-celebrity," in the words of the festival's dependably opinionated director, Jean-François Leroy. "Well, sorry, we were wrong!" he adds. "At least photographers who do portraits of celebrities have some talent."
As the Perpignan exhibitions and events program takes shape this year -- it's set for September 1 through 16 -- Leroy's message is not that the festival has suddenly embraced celebrity portraiture. It is, rather, an indictment of a perceived trend toward bland portrait work by photojournalists -- what Leroy calls "posed photos, or even worse, imitation passport-style photos that are utterly meaningless."
It is just this sort of work that the Perpignan organizers avoid. Or rather, it is the opposite -- engaging, expository, sometimes hard-hitting images -- that the festival seeks to showcase. This year's exhibition program includes work by photographers who have gone out of their way to tell stories -- many involving danger and difficulty -- all too often missed by mainstream media. (See slideshow.)
One such photojournalist is Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times, who has won many accolades and awards for her images of world events. Cole's Perpignan exhibition this year focuses on children, young victims of war, famine, and natural disasters, whose dignity and suffering appear all the more poignant at a tender age.
Associated Press shooter David Guttenfelder presents a series of personal images, reflecting alternative views of many of the hotspots he covers in his news photography, in a sometimes grim but also humanistic show called "The Dark Side of a War Photographer."
Tyler Hicks of the New York Times displays work from Afghanistan, where he has been covering the "Other U.S. War" since 2001, often dispatching disturbing reminders of the violence and difficulties that persist there. War photography from various global conflicts features prominently in Perpignan's annual presentation of winners in the "Visa d'Or" Daily Press competition and the World Press Photo awards.
As usual, a few exhibitions are retrospectives of work by seasoned photojournalists. Former Time staffer Dirck Halstead presents "Moments in Time," a collection from his recent coffee-table volume by the same name. And National Geographic veteran Paul Nicklen shows his dramatic evidence of global warming in fragile polar ecosystems.
According to Leroy, the combined work proves that photojournalism is alive and well and far from boring. "We wish to show that photographers are still around," he says, "and that they are not all portrait photographers."
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