An American in Perpignan.

Thursday, 6 September 2007

John McDermott Dispatch from Perpignan Day three.

The morning started out with a rare joint appearance at a press conference by Magnum’s Jonas Bendiksen and VII’s John Stanmeyer. It was immediately clear that these two top shooters respect and appreciate each other’s work very much. Their portfolio images held the audience, mostly other photographers remember, in rapt attention and their frank discussion of the business side of being a photojournalist, and of what it’s like to work alone on long stories far from home, were revealing.

A bit later on I participated in a special Canon Roundtable where representatives from Canon Inc. in Tokyo and Canon Europe had an open dialogue with an invited group of leading shooters from various photographic specialities. The discussion was lively and Canon got a lot of useful feedback on current products as well as valuable input on what these photographers would like to see from Canon in order to do their jobs better in the future.

In the afternoon Magnum hosted an open portfolio review in an open quadrangle of the beautiful old Couvent Sainte Claire. Photographers could show their work to Dennis Stock, Abbas, Chris Anderson and David Alan Harvey. The turnout was large but the four photographers tried to give as many people as possible a serious and honest critique of their work. I was very impressed by the generosity of the four Magnum photographers as well as the willingness of the participants to expose their work to evaluation and criticism in front of what turned out to be a large group of their peers.

John McDermott Dispatch from Perpignan Day Four.