Perpignan Friday: Getty awards, parties, and an emotional anniversary slide show

After the inspiring but heart-wrenching conflict-photographers symposium Friday morning, Getty presented slideshows of its five grantees for editorial photography this year. I have mentioned the most recent three before -- David Gillanders, Lynsey Addario, and Eugene Richards -- and I was already pretty familiar with their work. The two earlier grantees I wasn't familiar with, but very impressed by. Ian Martin's biography reads like many photojournalists: after early awards for his work, he started a wedding photography business to actually support himself and his family. The project that won the Getty grant, on South Africa's poor white communities, marks his re-entry to the photojournalism world. Although Richards' film and photography series War Is Personal was the one that really brought tears to my eyes, Lorena Ros's portraits of adults who were sexually abused as children certainly softened me up (see above). The simple portraits are paired with images of the spaces where the abuse took place or spaces that triggered those memories, and both will eventually be joined by archival images of the victims at the time of the abuse as well as audio interviews about their experiences. Jean-Jacques seemed unimpressed, complaining that we lack information about who the abusers were or what these people have gone through -- but to me this is precisely why the project is so powerful. It's not the abusers we should focus on, as the news media too often has, but the victims whose lives have been irrevocably scarred by the abuse. It's also important just to see these people and recognize that they look just like anyone else -- considering that one in four girls and one in seven boys are sexually abused before they reach the age of 17, they undoubtedly look just like someone you know.

When the press conferences finished I sat down with Denis Cuisy, the founder of CDP Editions, which printed 20 books by photographers who have been exhibited at Visa pour l'Image. The anniversary books, which were also sold as a complete set, were Jean-Francois's idea and chosen (as usual) by him. The vast majority came from this year's exhibitions (go here to see all the books), I'm guessing largely because of time contraints. The project was started just four months ago -- also when CDP Editions was created. The idea was to create a publishing company that gives 30% of total sales back to the photographer. That means the books are a little more expensive than usual, 40 Euros in this case, but it's a good idea that hopefully will continue to be feasible. Cuisy has been a lab director for years, known especially for his photographic prints for Yann Arthus Bertrand, but five years ago he decided digital printing was the future and he opened E-Center, the first digital lab in France. CDP Editions was basically created to produce these anniversary books, which start-to-finish only took a couple months (a tiny team -- Cuisy, Heléne de Bonis, Sylvaine Lecoeur, and Jean-Pierre Colly -- worked 7 days a week until midnight). Part of what E-Center is known for, though, is lightning-fast turnaround and small-run printing (down to a single copy). They work a lot with fashion houses that want to produce booklets of their recent shows, and they are going to assess the Visa pour l'Image project and decide if more book photo book publishing -- with big profits for the artist -- are in their future. As Cuisy explained, this was "more of an emotional creation," not only because it was more-or-less a personal favor to Jean-Francois, but also because the books will undoubtedly become most people's favored mementos from the anniversary.

Friday evening I made it into the Getty party on Jean-Jacques' coat tails. By far the most exclusive party of the week, it was also the best, Jean-Jacques and I agreed. Held on the huge top floor (with patio) of the Palais des Congres, it had better-than-usual food, and lots of it. But really, the thing that made the party the best was that it was not overly crowded. Unfortunately to create a party where you can hear the people you are talking to and you are genuinely interested in talking to everyone you meet, security and name-checking had to be tight. They even used secret elevators hid at the back of the second floor to cut down on line drama. That's not to say that crushed parties can't be fun in their own way. The National Geographic soiree before Thursday's slideshow was a good time...as long as you didn't have any interest in actually getting any food. There was little of it to start with and the crowd around it was almost impermeable. But then they brought out a giant cake for Nick Nichols' birthday (which was that night, coincidence?), and everyone was satiated. As I told Nick that night, I heard many people talking about how great his Look3 Festival in Charlottesville, VA, was (this was the second year), especially as an intimate, manageable counterpoint to the craziness that is Visa. The after-projection parties are a whole other madhouse, with people doing a lot of, "Oh yeah, that's my friend right over there, let me just talk to him for a second," and furiously calling people they "know" inside the party. Again, I was lucky enough to be inside the velvet ropes (thanks to Jean-Jacques), but I never get the need to be somewhere just because it's the place to be. I skipped the famous Paris Match party on the beach Saturday afternoon (I needed some down time and the weather was cold and grey), but Jean-Jacques told me that 300 came to a party intended for 100. In his words, "The food was scarce, but the warmth, the conviviality, the charm, the nostalgia, and the passion still functioned. The party is always a beautiful moment where for three hours everything is as beautiful as ever in the photographic world."Ok, ok, so maybe I should have gone...

Friday night I finally figured out the trick to the evening projection and got a table with some friends at the Place de la Republique (the bleacher chairs are unnameably uncomfortable). Of course, while I was off scoring a take-out crepe I missed Munem Wasif and Brent Stirton's acceptance moments -- they apparently both cried. Whatever, I would too...in fact they probably would have gotten me started so maybe it's better that I missed it. The following slide show was by far the best of the week...how could it not be with favorite exhibitions from the last 20 years. Jean-Francois refused to call them the "best" of the past two decades, saying that kind of selection would be impossible if not pointless. As with almost everything at Perpignan, I suspect the projects selected were personal favorites of Jean-Francois himself. And as with almost everything else at Perpignan, we have to admit that his taste is very very good. Many were THE seminal photo essays from a given conflict: Patrick Robert on Liberia, Blenkinsop on Laos (a-ma-zing), Hocine on Algeria, Greene on Chechnya, Pellegrin on Cambodia, Stoddart on Bosnia/Sarajevo (incredible). Those were broken up with a couple portrait projects, humorous if a little foreboding. Zed Nelson's Gun Nation got some laughs (especially from the non-Americans) and Jocelyn Bain Hogg's The Firm, incredibly intimate shots of big mob bosses, fed the same fascination that made The Sopranos such a hit. The show wrapped up with Paul Fusco's Children of Chernobyl, a harrowing yet utterly sympathetic look at the horrible human costs of the disaster, the project Fusco is probably best known for and understandably protective of. After the project Jean-Francois called Fusco up on stage to thank him for all his work. The two men hugged and jostled the microphone, then stayed in the embrace while everyone watched Fusco's recently unearthed photos taken from the Robert Kennedy funeral train. After that Jean-Francois called the photographers who had been on the screen up to the stage by their first names: Patrick (Robert), Paolo (Pellegrin), Scott (Thode), Stanley (Greene), Hans (Silvester), Philip (Blenkinsop), Laurent (van der Stockt), and Marie (Dorigny, who was unfortunately at the Place de la Republique, not the main Campo Santo site, especially considering she would have meant at least one woman on the stage). Thank yous and kisses and hugs went around several times, and then the final presentation came on: a retrospective photographic look at the Rolling Stones. In a way I'm glad for the Stones projection because until then I hadn't found anything to get really indignant about. A way-too-long, distracting, fawning piece, it was offensive largely because it was simply so out of place. But much more than that, it angered me because by putting it at the end of this night specifically, especially thrown up above an unequaled lineup of photojournalistic talent, it sadly perpetuated the "rock star" attitude that Visa sometimes seems to push on its stars. These photographers are not rocks stars, and by treating them like they are, obsessing about their surfaces rather than their substance, we are denying their deeper human qualities -- the exact things they work so hard to illuminate.

What I later found out was that during that unconscionable Rolling Stones projection, Jean-Francois was being presented with a set of prints: one from every photographer included in Visa's first 20 years. I asked him the next day about Friday night's projection and he said, "I will not mention that because I will cry; I wasn't expecting that and I don't deserve that." With characteristic humility and an almost frustrating refusal to take any responsibility for the festival's achievements, he went on, "Visa can be Visa only because the photographers here are talented. We created a tool for this field and today it turned 20, that's all."

~Miki Johnson