LanguagesJohn McDermott Dispatch from Perpignan - Day five.
Friday proved to be the busiest day at Visa pour l’Image so far. The exhibition halls were very crowded. We tried to do a video interview with VII’s John Stanmeyer in the room where his National Geographic malaria story was displayed, but it proved to be too crowded so we retreated to a secluded garden at the back of the Couvent des Minimes. John was preparing to leave the next day for his home in Bali as he and his wife are expecting their third child in another week or two.
After the interview I ran into Tyler Hicks of the New York Times. He was taking a few shots of people looking at his show. He had just wrapped up the latest of many interviews he had been asked to do in the hall where his Afghanistan show was hung. His work was being shown in the Espace Paul Fusco, named in honour of the great Look and Magnum photographer who had been a friend and hero of mine since I started as a photographer in San Francisco in the Seventies. It turns out Tyler also knows Paul and shares my admiration for the man and his work.
A bit later I caught up with Greek photographer Polaris Images photographer Yannis Kontos who was signing his book on North Korea, Red Utopia, in the Couvent des Minimes bookshop. Meeting Yannis was one of the highlights of my week in Perpignan. I have always admired his images and now I know that he’s not only a special photographer but a really nice guy as well.
After a quick stop at the party hosted by Agence France Press and Getty Images on the rooftop terrace of the Palais de Congrès, I headed to the Campo Santo for the evening screening, the concluding highlight of each day at Visa pour l’Image. As usual, it was an impressive multi-projector production with an amazing soundtrack put together as ever by Ivan Lattay. After a long but quick-moving show of some of the best reportage produced in the past year it was time to present the Visa d’or Magazine. The first interview CPN did here this week was with French photographer Lizzie Sadin. We were all impressed by the passion and the humanity of this former social worker who had dedicated eight years with very little support to the telling of the story of imprisoned children around the world. When Michael Rand, legendary Sunday Times editor and jury chair, announced Lizzie as the winner I felt that they had really made the right choice. Judging by the audience reaction it seemed they too shared that view.
