• Elle round table
• Round Table
• Other meetings
• Fnac book signing
• Transmission for l’Image
• Calendar

Transmission for l’Image

For the last twenty-one years, Visa pour l’Image has been presenting the best of international photojournalism featured as exhibitions and in the evening screenings at Campo Santo. Thousands of reports and hundreds of thousands of pictures have shown what has been happening around the world, and often very grim experiences. Behind these photos there is the work of the journalist, in particular the photojournalist. Contrary to common belief, it is not just a matter of talent; it is a job requiring technical expertise, nerve and know-how. The distinguished press figure Pierre Lazareff used to say that photojournalism was savoir-faire et faire savoir, know-how and letting people know. The Visa pour l’Image team has decided that it is high time to do so, to share this know-how.

Visa pour l’Image, over the years, has been the crossroads not just for photojournalism, but also for reporting. The crisis that has hit the printed press means journalists have had to stop and question what they are doing; they now have to see how they can work in other formats and media such as the Web and television. Every year we are pleased to see new generations of photojournalists flocking to the exhibitions and evening shows, eager to learn and understand how photography works and what the job entails. This is not the stuff of legends about top reporters doing major features; what they want to see is how to build a career, how to tell stories.

Leading photographers, both French and international, have been exhibited at Visa pour l’Image and most are now part of the “family.” The family bond is built on shared values – ethics, courage, respect and truth. These issues are the subject of debate in the streets and bars of Perpignan, and are central issues as practices in journalism change and there is the ever-present temptation to play around with the truth.

So this year, for the first time, we are organizing a forum named “Transmission for l’Image” as an opportunity for discussion, for meeting people and, most importantly, for “transmission,” passing things onto the next generation. Photographers and documentary reporters who came along twenty years ago, timidly showing their work, have now grown up to become some of the prominent figures in the profession, but as members of the Visa pour l’Image family, they are certainly not unapproachable. They are ready and willing to share what they have learnt, to talk about their values and explain how they put them into practice.

This will take concrete form, but not as a conventional workshop as there are already workshops elsewhere, and that it is not our role as a festival. Visa pour l’Image is inviting fifty young journalists to spend three days with us as a learning experience, to discuss issues with six photojournalists and picture editors who will also be free to invite other professionals to be involved.