Message from the President of the Association Visa pour l'Image - 33rd edition

The 33rd Visa pour l’Image festival has a special significance this year giving us the opportunity to gett back together with our audiences and visitors. All the different players, ranging from the public bodies in France at all levels, national and regional, the département, the greater metropolitan area of Perpignan Méditerranée Métropole, and the municipality of Perpignan, through to private partners and the teams working on Visa pour l’Image-Perpignan, all have rallied with great energy to ensure that this year’s festival achieves the distinction for which it is known, despite the uncertainty of the health crisis, and to see it move ahead and develop as required by current conditions. This year we are able to program the traditional evening shows at Campo Santo, the venue and historic heritage site that epitomizes the festival, where the force and delight of the pictures screened can turn each and every one of us into a messenger. It is indeed at this unusual time for the entire world, a time of much violence and uncertainty, that the question of freedom of expression is more relevant than ever. Visa pour l’Image and the festival partners, both public and private, are proud to support photojournalists, applauding their courage and constant commitment to freedom of expression and information, even in the face of life-threatening risks. Visa pour l’Image stands as a witness to the fury, complexity and beauty of the world, while also conveying messages of humanism and fraternity, here in Perpignan, the global capital of photojournalism. I wish to invite all advocates of freedom and democracy to return to the exhibition venues in Perpignan, to attend the events and evening shows, for our presence at the 33rd festival will express a rekindling of hope and renewed energy.

Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres President of the Association Visa pour l’Image - Perpignan