Climate change has flooded Perpignan. The most common theme of the photojournalism works that are presented, until September 17, in Visa pour l’Image – one of the largest exhibitions of the genre in the world – are changes in nature, and disorder and pain that causes global warming. Fires, hurricanes, climate refugees, disappearance of species… are themes directly present in seven of the 24 exhibitions – all free – of the event, although they are indirectly manifested in others.
A trip through Iraq across the Tigris River, where in summer shepherds try to relieve livestock suffocated by temperatures that can exceed 50 °C,
It is difficult not to feel chills when faced with the daily images of women that the Iranian Ebrahim Noroozi has taken in Afghanistan and which has earned him the Visa d’Or award, for his reportage The saddest country in the world and the worst country for women. Among the most notable exhibitions is also that of Londoner Nick Brandt, who makes joint portraits of people and animals in stylized black and white. Or that of the multi-award-winning Danish photographer Mads Missen, who delves into the quagmire of drug trafficking in Colombia in White blood: the lost cocaine war.
Image of a school for girls in Afghanistan, from the series ‘The saddest country in the world and the worst for women’, for which Ebrahim Noroozi has won the Visa d’Or award
For her part, the British Emily Garthwaite shows a new vision of Iraq through a tour of the Tigris; The Mexican Christopher Rogel Blanquet documents the daily life of five families affected by the use of chemical products used in agriculture ( Beautiful poison ) and the Colombian Federico Ríos Escobar travels The path of the last chance, in the Darien region that separates the two Americas.
Image from the exhibition by Nanna Heitman, about the perception that Russia has of the war in Ukraine
Professionals have also debated the big topic of the moment: artificial intelligence, which poses a threat to accurate information. France Presse journalist Grégoire Lemarchand suggested that agencies “add a label for real images, an ‘AI free’ label.” Because, as Jean-François Leroy, director of Visa pour l’Image, says: “If photojournalism and this festival continue to exist it is for a reason: because we want to see what is real.”
