Resistant and even resilient, both real, or “face-to-face”, as we say in these times of coronavirus, and virtual: to exist in 2020, the Visa pour l'image festival, temple of photojournalism in Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales) , transferred to bear witness again to the state of the human condition in the world.
On Saturday, Italian photographer Fabio Bucciarelli won the Visa d'or News, the festival's most prestigious award, for a report in Bergamo, an Italian city at the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"I think we will come to the end of this epidemic, I am not sure that it is not already too late to save the planet", worries Jean-François Leroy, the founding director, relieved that the festival is holds with 20 exhibitions concentrated in three places and a multitude of uploads to replace the screenings of Campo Santo.
Thus, since the opening at the end of August, masked, disciplined visitors have been sliding practically silently in front of the human faces of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York during the dark hours of confinement.
The black and white images are by Peter Turnley, a Franco-American photographer experienced in theaters of war, confined to what he calls his personal World War I, "a health conflict facing an invisible enemy, which concerns all populations" .
Erika, a traveling nurse, caring for Covid-19 patients at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, listens to a man sing "America the Beautiful" while standing on the roof of a car.
Peter Turnley
“I wanted to show the courage, the dignity, the humanity of the people of New York, and above all of the essential workers.
These workers who ask for nothing in return, who do what they must do out of a sense of duty and compassion.
They show us the way and give us hope ”, he explains, moved by the spontaneous reactions of the public to the exhibition“ The human face of Covid-19 in New York ”.
"There is nothing more gratifying that people are touched this way," he concludes.
The inevitable Covid-19 route of Visa's exhibitions, on topical infusion, is completed by Pandemic (s), a collective exhibition, or else "Covid-19, the Anointing of the Sick" (Ryan Christopher Jones for the New York Times) and the remarkable production of the international daily press at Barracks Gallieni.
Frame death with modesty
Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis), April 20, 2020, a funeral director in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic.
LP / Philippe de Poulpiquet
Among them, the work of Philippe de Poulpiquet.
From Codogno, in Italy, to the funeral directors of Pantin, it is the path of Covid-19 of this great reporter to the Parisien-Today in France.
More than forty days crossing the virus and photographing death.
“You then have to ask the right questions, take a step back, frame with modesty.
Complicated subject to deal with.
Exchange glances with nurses and doctors, take your time, especially take your time in missions lasting several hours, harnessed and protected like a surgeon, ”he says after having explored human distress and the deadly virus, often at a few tens of minutes from his own home.
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Like this woman, alone, helpless, supported by a funeral director in front of her mother's grave.
Like this grandfather discovered at his lifeless home a few weeks after the death of his wife.
And that the firefighters must take.
AND ALSO…
The most unique aspect of the Mohana is their special bond with birds./Sarah Caron for Le Figaro Magazine
The bird people and the poisoned lake
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For Sarah Caron, the last hours of the Mohana, descendants of the first inhabitants of the Indus Valley in Pakistan, for 5000 years sound.
“They live in about forty houseboats on Lake Manchar, gradually poisoned by a mixture of arsenic, industrial wastewater, salt, chemicals and pesticides.
This has meant for several years now the end of the fishing activities that supported the community, ”explains the photographer.
His work is exhibited in large format.
It faithfully reflects the complicity of this fishing people with birds and their ancestral way of life on the lake.
The last of the Mohana
, inner courtyard of the Dominican church.
An ocean of waste.
The figures provided by photographer James Whitlow Delano, based in Japan, are giddy.
In 2017, our planet would have produced 8.3 billion tons of plastic, or more than one ton per capita of inhabitants, primitive populations included.
Of which 6.3 billion tonnes end up in landfill, in rivers, in front of rivers of plastic at the bottom of the oceans, forming hills, sometimes mountains, on earth.
His investigation focused on poor countries in Asia as drowned in plastic.
A planet drowned in plastic.
Convent of the Minims.
Water hunting in the streets of Cuba
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Obviously, Cuba enthusiasts who love luxury hotels with an intense blue swimming pool will turn around on their deckchairs.
With Manifiesto del Agua, the photographer Sanne Derks offers a hydraulic tour of the tropical city which abounds in music but lacks water for its inhabitants.
For them, water hunting is a daily challenge, despite the new Constitution which obliges the state to provide drinking water to its citizens.
Beyond the plethora of tourist demand and the delay taken by the communist regime.
Manifiesto Del Agua, Dominican Church
Practical information
Visa pour l'image
, international photojournalism festival, in Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales), until September 27.
Screenings, exhibitions and interviews with photographers on the festival site.
Tourist office
: to find accommodation, visit the city, go see the sea ... information on the website of the Perpignan tourist office.