The Festival Photoreporter de Saint Brieuc opened over the weekend of the 11th and 12th of October. We left rainy Paris behind, arriving in sunny Saint Brieuc to the sound of bagpipes. It was official: we had reached Amorican land.
My opinion of my “maiden” visit to the festival is mixed. On the one hand, I saw some lavish exhibitions, including Philippe Chancel’s breathtaking show, as well as powerful new subjects thanks to Peter DiCampo and Bruno Boudjelal. One the other hand, I was disappointed by both the substance and the form of other exhibitions: the subjects were far from perfect and the images were pixellated.
The concept is promising. The festival, organized in response to a crisis in the profession of photojournalism, has set up an endowment fund to finance the projects of a dozen photographers each year. Each October, the completed projects are presented free of charge to the Saint Brieuc public.
The festival has been going for three years. Over the phone, festival director Alexandre Solacolu acknowledged the problem’s with this year’s festival. If 2012 and 2013 were the beta versions, this year was really its first act. They’ll learn from its errors and successes. The priority was to establish a solid foundation and to continue producing the projects of 10 photographers per year, says Solacolu. “I would prefer to limit myself to ten projects and focus more on the quality and presentation.”
This was also the first year with Marc Prüst as artistic director. He followed five winners throughout their whole projects, from beginning to end. We were in the exhibition halls of the Carré Rosengart when Prüst explained to me that there’s no theme to the festival. What’s on display here, he says, is a “photography of the real,” and what matters to him as artistic director is his ability to communicate the narrative and history of the subjects.
My favorites were Philippe Chancel’s magnificent exhibition about the Jordan Valley, Bruno Boudjelal’s work on the heart of Paris, Peter DiCampo’s inventory of major failures of GMOs in Ghana (despite the low quality of the prints), and Patrick Robert’s report on the Chadian army in Mali, with shots taken by soldiers themselves. And I cannot forget Franck Vogel’s series on the water war being waged by India and China over the Brahmaputra river , not to mention James Whitlow Delano’s photographs of Amazonian rainforests in Ecuador, which also had some difficulties in the printing process.
Now you understand why I was both satisfied and frustrated as I rode the train back to Paris.
FESTIVAL
PhotoReporter en Baie de Saint Brieuc
Until November 2nd, 2014
La Maison du Festival
2 rue de la Gare
22000 Saint Brieuc
France
To See : Bruno Boudjelal, James Whitlow Delano, Nicole Segers and Franck Vogel
Le Carré Rosengart
Quai Armez à Saint-Brieuc (Port du Légué)
22000 Saint Brieuc
France
To See : Philippe Chancel, Peter DiCampo, Sonia Naudy, Patrick Robert and Yongming Guo
La Maison de la Baie
Site de l’Etoile
22120 Hillion
France
To See : Emilie Luider « les algues bretonnes »
http://www.festival-photoreporter.fr
