Patrick Chauvel: 50 years on the front line
From Vietnam to Afghanistan, the photojournalist Patrick Chauvel has covered numerous conflict zones around the world. He was barely twenty when he produced his first news story and took liking to this difficult job, which he went on to describe in two books: Rapporteur de guerre and Sky. The exhibition traces his exceptional career through a selection of images, many of which he took at the risk of his life.
The Yellow Vest crisis
The photographers Olivier Coret and Eric Hadj review the social crisis that has swept through France, triggered by the Yellow Vest movement: barricades at roundabouts, confrontations with the police, vandalism in the Champs-Elysées… as well as the daily life of anti-establishment protesters. The two photographers take an inquiring and detailed look at a movement that keeps making headlines.
“A Photographer’s Journal”
This is the title of a beautiful book published by Alain Keler. Visa Pour l’Image decided to pay a tribute to his work with a retrospective exhibition. Keler’s black-and-white photographs represent a masterful long-term project, in particular covering the years between 1968 and 1989. The exhibition delves into a life devoted to the subtle art of press photography.
Rue Gay-Lussac after rioting. Paris, May 1968. © Alain Keler / MYOP
Wounded animals
The photographer Kirsten Luce documents the suffering of wild animals being posed with tourists—a practice that is only growing. Tigers, elephants, polar bears… many animals are being exploited with little regard for their welfare and emotional health. The photographer focuses on these wounded animals, denouncing the widespread practice of abuse.
A new cold war
An unspoken cold war is going on in the northern regions of the world, but its economic and political implications are enormous. This observation is made by Louie Palu, a photographer who traveled to the Arctic where several states, including Russia and the United States, are contesting territorial boundaries. He photographed military installations mushrooming in a region where untapped oil reserves fuel greed.
Abortion rights struggle
In her series The Price of Choice, the photographer Kasia Strek shows the difficulties faced by many women seeking abortion. In 2017, the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy was still either nonexistent or severely limited in 139 countries. Kasia Strek sheds light on the struggle waged by large numbers of women prevented by their countries from having an abortion.
Yemen: An unacknowledged crisis
Yemen has been ravaged by four years of war and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. The photographer Lorenzo Tugnoli offers a critical report of the situation in order to help us understand the extent of the catastrophe generated by the war which has killed 50,000 people and deprived over 3 million of their homes, plunging many into starvation… As Jean-François Leroy, director of the Festival, points out, this is a conflict we don’t hear enough about.
By Jean-Baptiste Gauvin
Visa pour l’image, 31st International Photojournalism Festival
August 31 to September 15, 2019
Perpignan
