Was fortunate to be able to visit this exhibition which was on from August 31 - September 15th 2013 in Perpignan. I was in the South West of France for the Arles exhibition (see previous Blog) and Perpignan was within reasonable travelling distance. I was really glad that I went. It is perhaps unfair to compare Photographic Festivals with different aims but the difference between the Perpignan Festival and the Arles Festival was so great that it was difficult not to be aware how much better organised and presented was the Perpignan material. This may have something to do with the personality of the Director - Jean-Francois Leroy. In the Festival Catalogue ( VISA POUR L'IMAGE PERPIGNAN 2013. Snoeck 2013. pp 6 -35. see also http://www.visapourlimage.com/news/5907.do) there is a record of a conversation between Leroy and two Journalists. The conversation provides a wealth of information about the history of photojournalism and the changes that have occurred over the period of the Festival and is worth reading for that alone. The section that points up the value of a strong personality in charge reads:
Q: You've drawn criticism over the past 25 years, and one charge is that you're an ayatollah in the photo business. Do you want to talk about that?
A: I was nicknamed "Ayatollah" who called me "the ayatollah of pictures with meaning". I'm sorry, but I took that as a compliment. Okay, I can speak out, speak up, and loud. Yes, I have said things, and afterwards wished that I hadn't, lots of things.
I will comment on individual photographers and their work in separate blogs but given the many thousands of students studying for a degree in Photography and dreaming of a career in that field I found the following comments in the hand-out leaflet for the Festival sobering. When the Festival began magazines "offered assignments to produce their own reports, agencies were flourishing, talented photographers worked happily and good humoredly, with proper payment for their work..... that was another era, a different world, a time now past. Today, while some magazines still produce reports, there are fewer and fewer of them, and budgets are getting smaller an d smaller. Many agencies have disappeared or, even worse are but a mere shadow of their former selves. What about photographers who make a decent living from their work? There must be only a couple of dozen at the very most." It continues : ........ there have never been so many people aspiring to be photographers...It is easy to achieve technical proficiency, but it is quite different when it comes to being a proper journalist. Not everyone can tell a story as it is.....what news story do you want to tell? Where did it happen? When? Who are the people in the pictures?"
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