Following last year’s resounding success, with 150,000 visitors in three weeks, Visa Pour l’Image 2017 is underway. The program of the 29th edition, which will take place between September 2 and 17, will include some twenty-five exhibitions. Here is a sneak preview of the events scheduled thus far.
As every year, Visa Pour l’Image will reflect on current events. Three exhibitions are thus devoted to Mosul: Alvaro Canovas’s (Paris Match) L’Amère reconquête [Bitter Conquest]; Laurent Van der Stockt’s (Le Monde/Getty Images) La bataille de Mossoul [The Battle of Mosul]; and Lorenzo Meloni’s (Magnum Photos) La chute du califat [The Fall of the Caliphate].
Pollution and global warming are tackled by the Chinese Lu Guang, in his series Development and Pollution, and by Vlad Sokhin (Cosmos/Panos Pictures/laif), who traveled around the globe to photograph the consequences of man-made climactic changes.
There will be a retrospective of Michael Nichols, a Visa Pour l’Image regular, who has been a National Geographic photographer for forty years. His work continues to explore the interactions between humans and nature.
Darcy Padilla (Agence VU’), winner of last year’s Prix Canon de la Femme Photojournalist, sponsored by Elle magazine, will present the results of her project Dreamers about the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Ferhat Bouda (Agence VU’), winner of the Pierre and Alexandra Boulat 2016 Award, sponsored by SCAM, will show his series Les Berbères au Maroc, une culture en résistance [The Berbers in Morocco: A Culture of Resistance].
Among other topics, Marco Longari, director of the African division of Agence France-Presse, based in Johannesburg, S. Africa, covers the continent; Isadora Kosofsky, addresses the issue of youth incarceration with Vinny and David, a five-year-long project centered on two brothers in a prison in Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Ed Kashi studies a chronic renal disease of unknown origin discovered in the Middle-East, Asia, South Asia, and Central America.
Renée C. Byer (The Sacramento Bee) presents her work on A New Struggle: Afghan Refugees in the United States, while Amy Toensing (National Geographic) shows Widows, a project developed in Bosnia, India, and Uganda. Lastly, Larry Towell (Magnum Photos) looks at the Sioux’s battle against a Dakota oil pipeline that threatens their sacred sites and risks contaminating drinking water.
In the excitement of the festival, don’t miss the exhibition of David Douglas Duncan’s photographs of Picasso, organized by the City of Perpignan and held in parallel to the official program of Visa Pour l’Image at the Walter Benjamin Center of Contemporary Art from June 24 to November 5, 2017. In 1956, David Douglas Duncan, then employed by Life magazine, met Pablo Picasso in Cannes. Their friendship lasted until the artist’s death in 1973. The images show an intimate side of Picasso.
Sophie Bernard
Visa Pour l’Image 2017
September 2 to 17, 2017
Perpignan, France
http://www.visapourlimage.com/
David Douglas Duncan, Duncan–Picasso
June 24 to November 5, 2017
Centre d’art contemporain Walter Benjamin
Place du Pont-d’En-Vestit
66000 Perpignan
France
