People say Jean-Pierre Laffont was everywhere. At the right time. That is the strength of his photographs, of his career, and of his archives today: countless images taken across the globe, documenting major social and political events of the 20th century, many produced solo, with great empathy for the vulnerable, and photographs that have since become icons of American history.
Born in Algiers in 1935, Jean-Pierre Laffont—affectionately called “Laffont” by his wife Eliane—moved to New York in 1965 and quickly became one of the leading American correspondents for major French agencies — Gamma, then Sygma — helping to establish the “French touch” as a hallmark of photojournalism from the 1960s to the 1980s, when Paris was its world capital.
The United States gave him everything: work, a family, friends. But also unforgettable experiences as a reporter, proximity to the powerful and the famous, moments of fear, and the chance to record the striking contrasts of a nation in perpetual motion, with its social fractures, internal revolutions, and dramatic or joyful events still studied by the world today.
From America, Jean-Pierre Laffont never returned. This year, however, France honors him, and the festival Visa pour l’Image, through his longtime friend Jean-François Leroy, with a lifetime retrospective and—above all, of his work. Presented at the Couvent des Minimes in Perpignan from August 30 to September 14, 2025, it offers a journey through more than half a century of images, and a splendid visual experience.
On this occasion, the photographer answered Blind’s questions. It is a lesson in humanism, humility, curiosity, and, as he likes to stress, in freedom.
The title of your exhibition at Visa pour l’Image refers to “Photographing in Total Freedom.” What does this freedom represent to you after more than 50 years of career?
I am a loner, I like to work alone on what seems important to me, and only my desire to inform has ever motivated me. I choose my stories, plan my own routes, build my reports, make appointments, advance my expenses, buy my plane tickets, develop the films, and write my texts. I never liked working on assignment, and very early in my career I refused all commissions so as not to sacrifice my freedom to work.
For this exhibition, “Photographing in Total Freedom,” all the photos selected and their stories embody this notion of photographic freedom. It was Eliane, my wife and my editor, who wanted to show how I worked: discovering the world in total freedom. All of this work was carried out in complete freedom.
You were a founding member of Gamma USA and Sygma Photo News. How did these structures allow the editorial freedom you defend?
When I started my career as a photojournalist in the 1960s, photographers worked in complete anonymity. Their photos were never credited and belonged to the clients who commissioned them. But I was lucky to join Gamma, a small agency that had just opened in Paris. Gamma was a photographer’s dream, a dream of freedom and autonomy, an agency of photographers for photographers—it was a state of mind that suited me perfectly. I had no one to answer to, only to find my stories, cover them as best I could, and send my photos to the agency, which then sold them to the press. It was perfect for me. The financial aspect never interested me. What I wanted was to be free and to work on the stories I chose—something Gamma, and later Sygma, offered me.
You describe yourself as “driven by the desire to be a witness of your time.” Which events or encounters most shaped your vision of the world?
From 1965, and for more than 30 years, I traveled throughout the United States with the desire to capture the spirit of the period and its major political movements, making me the French photographer who devoted much of his life to documenting America. Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Robert Kennedy were pivotal encounters. But covering Vietnamese refugees, the women’s liberation movement, gay and civil rights, the poor and the destitute, the hardships of farmers, the problems caused by immigration and racism—these were the American events I was proud to witness.
I was also drawn to the major international events of the 20th century. Abroad, I covered key conflicts and historical transformations in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe: Vietnam, the bombs in Guam, Mozambique, Angola, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, India, Cuba, England, the opening of China, the industrialization of Korea and Japan, Soviet Poland, Palestine, and Israel…
But it was in 1979, during riots in Pakistan, that I encountered, amid tear gas, a four-year-old ragged child trying to sell me bottles of Coca-Cola. At that moment, I thought of all the invisible children forced into degrading and dangerous work. That’s when I got the idea of doing a report on child slavery, and for a year I traveled to 12 countries entirely at my own expense. My report was published worldwide, and many countries became aware of the plight of their poorest children. At that precise moment, I realized that photographs could change the world. That report made me an engaged photographer, and from then on, social issues were closest to my heart.
After immigrating to the United States in 1965, you covered political and social movements such as riots. How did you experience this period of American social upheaval?
I was very fortunate to arrive in this country in full turmoil: the Vietnam War, student demonstrations, President Nixon’s resignation after the Watergate scandal, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, New York’s financial collapse, black ghettos ablaze in the big cities, the Ku Klux Klan in the South, crime, drug trafficking, corrupt leaders, the oil crisis… everything was there before me. I only had to pick up my cameras and work. I was able to photograph everything freely. I later published a book titled Photographer’s Paradise. Many thought I meant America was a paradise, but it was my paradise because I could work freely there.
You covered the very first Gay Pride in New York on June 28, 1970, starting from Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. How did you experience this historic moment?
Following violent incidents against homosexuals a year earlier, a group organized a march to protest homophobia. The first Gay Pride began on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village and marched to the park. To the great joy of spectators, a contest for the longest kiss was held. Though the demands were serious, the atmosphere was extremely joyful. Everyone was dressed provocatively and flamboyantly. There were makeup sessions in the park—it was an exhilarating moment. A very personal note about my family life: my mother’s second husband was a gynecologist who developed a famous surgical technique for gender transition and was a pioneer in transforming men into women. As a teenager, I met homosexuals in his clinic who told me about their suffering. It was therefore with admiration and relief that I photographed the first Gay Pride in New York. At last, things were changing for them!
Your images of the Harlem riots and other American neighborhoods are among your most striking. How did you remain objective while documenting social violence?
Arriving in the United States in 1965, I missed the great civil rights years of the 1950s and the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. But I photographed MLK in April 1967, when he gave his speech against the Vietnam War in front of the United Nations building. I even managed to capture the reflection of the building in his eyes. I also, sadly, photographed his funeral in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 9, 1968. Before his open coffin, his entire family and all the black mothers wanted their children not to forget this moment and gathered around the hero of the African-American cause. I don’t really like the word “objective,” and my view is not impartial. But through my lens, I showed all the changes and oscillations of those years as a rendezvous between hope and despair. Those years deeply moved me, and I always wanted to show the great poverty and misery of the black ghettos in the Deep South, and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses.
On August 9, 1974, while your colleagues photographed Ford’s inauguration, you followed Nixon to the helicopter. Was this instinct, for one of your most published images?
It was the inauguration of the new president Gerald Ford, who became the 38th president of the United States. I saw that dozens of photographers were covering the event. I was no longer interested; I didn’t want to take the same picture as everyone else. I decided to follow Nixon and his wife as they boarded the helicopter to leave. No one around them. I was alone with two other photographers. Only three of us covered that moment: the guards rolled up the red carpet, and the strong wind threatened to blow off their caps. I captured Nixon’s departure, with whom I had spent so many years. I only had time to take four photos of this memorable moment. I knew then that this photo would be important, that I had made the right decision. Indeed, it was the Nixon photo that ran in every magazine. Instinct? No, I don’t think so—but a determination not to make the same photo as everyone else and to follow Nixon’s story to the end.
Between the KKK, the Savage Skulls, and the crowds of Apollo XI (other famous reports), your images reveal the contradictions of America. Did you consciously seek to show these paradoxes, or did they emerge naturally?
All my books on America—Photographer’s Paradise, New York City Up and Down, or New York Noir—show the paradoxes of America in the 1960s and 1970s and its incredible contradictions. I didn’t try to show them; they were in front of me, and I discovered them as I photographed. Much later, when I looked back at all those photos taken over three decades, I realized that my images actually showed a country full of chaos, riots, protests, conflicts—and that taken together, they revealed the birth of the America we know today. They form a personal and historical portrait of a country I still look upon with as much critical distance as affection.
You served as a press officer during the Algerian War and received the Croix de la Valeur Militaire (Military Cross) for your humanitarian work. Did this experience influence your approach to photojournalism?
I should clarify that I was press officer for the infantry military school in Cherchell, in the Algiers region, for six months. I had the opportunity to see and photograph General de Gaulle visiting the school in 1961. It was also there that I illustrated the life of reserve infantry cadets, and all these photos are now in the army archives.
Then I was appointed head of a Harki unit in Oran for the remainder of my military service—two and a half years in total. During this period, I witnessed much injustice: poverty, illiterate children with no school, untreated illnesses, no medical visits or doctors in the region, no financial aid for daily needs (the elders of the douars did not receive their pensions, although many had fought in the 1939-40 war), difficulty obtaining identity cards, children under five working in the fields. With the help of the Foreign Legion (disciplinary unit), I oversaw the construction of a school, a road bringing water from the valley to the top of the hills where we were stationed, and finished the fortifications of my post. For these humanitarian actions, I received the Croix de la Valeur Militaire a few months after completing my service in the summer of 1962.
To sum up: yes, the events in Algeria that I experienced from March 1960 to April 1962, of which I was an involuntary witness, definitely influenced my decision to become a photojournalist.
How has photojournalism evolved since your beginnings? Is this “freedom” to photograph still possible today for young reporters?
I am perfectly aware that I lived through the golden age of photojournalism. My life has been a true epic lived in an atmosphere of freedom. Photographers and photojournalism were respected. The photographer friends of my generation and I created the myth of the great reporter that still inspires so many vocations today. I feel I did useful and important work.
Today, and for some years already, this work has been undergoing a profound transformation. The world is overwhelmed with electronic images immediately replaced by others. The economic model has collapsed. The photo market is drowned in overproduction, and magazines no longer have the budgets they once did. Photojournalism is no longer profitable, and many of my younger friends cannot live solely from selling their photos. Furthermore, no one can work in total freedom as I did. If I had to redo some of my photos today, I would no longer have the same access to stories, and I would be flooded with lawsuits. Everything has changed, and our profession is in complete transformation. My way of working is over. I look with interest at the work of young photographers around me; I admire their resilience and courage, and I can’t help but think: “I was lucky.”
Among all your photographs, which one best embodies this notion of “photographing in total freedom,” and why?
I would choose the photo of the child on the roof of the car. I was in the Bronx during the summer of 1966. The neighborhood was dangerous and hit hard by the recession; the streets were dirty. But I wanted to go there because the sanitation department had launched a campaign calling on residents to clean their alleys. Newly arrived in the United States, I wandered those streets, and everything seemed wonderful to photograph. I came upon these children on Fox Street. They were playing on the roof of an abandoned Plymouth Savoy—it was their playground. They played freely; everything seemed possible to them, as it did to me. Photographed in total freedom, living in total freedom. That photo became for me a metaphor for freedom and the joy of living even in difficult circumstances.
Looking back at your images from the 1960s-70s today, are there details you now notice that escaped you at the time?
I try not to look back at my photos. I am lucky. My wife Eliane is my editor—she selects all the photos and produces my books and exhibitions. I am the type who only remembers the photos I wasn’t able to take. I am my own harshest critic, so I am happy to let Eliane take care of the photos I did take. In any case, it is not the photo I made that interests me, but the next one.
What advice would you give young photographers today who aspire to the same creative and journalistic freedom you experienced?
Today, my way of working is over, and the profession of photojournalist is being rewritten. It is up to young photojournalists to rewrite it. Yet there are essential things that define the profession, and I have a few pieces of advice: go to museums, look at the work of the great photographers who inspire you, research the stories you want to cover, be observant, humble, and curious—and don’t forget that you are doing the most beautiful job in the world. This profession is more important than ever and still makes people dream.
“Photographing in Total Freedom,” by Jean-Pierre Laffont, is on view until September 14, 2025 at the Couvent des Minimes in Perpignan, France as part of the Visa pour l’Image festival.
