For its 12th edition, the Association Nationale des Iconographes (ANI) presents three photographers selected among the front-runners for the VISA POUR L’IMAGE-PERPIGNAN 2016. The Visas de l’ANI are the fruit of a thirteen-year-long collaboration between VISA POUR L’IMAGE-PERPIGNAN and the ANI.
During the professional week at the festival, the ANI organized portfolio viewings and met with fledgling and/or seasoned photographers. The iconographers’2016 favorites were presented to a jury in Paris. This year’s winners include Monika Bulaj (Poland) with Nur; Myriam Meloni (France–Italy) with Different Shades of Blue; and Ingetje Tadros (the Netherlands) with This Is My Country. The three winners were exhibited at the Gobelins–École de l’Image throughout November alongside the three award winners of the Visas de l’ANI2016.
Monika Bulaj’s project stands out by her refusal to join military units in order to conduct her work as a photographer: she rediscovers Afghanistan as narrated by travel writers from Maillart to Bouvier. Equipped with her journal and her Leica, she crisscrosses the country from the Iranian to the Chinese border, and on her own navigates the complexities of geography and security in Afghan provinces. She had confronted the grim wartime economy as well as the accompanying corruption and tribalism. And yet, rather than the common fascination with the absurdities of daily life and human suffering, her lens captures the beauty of the region and its inhabitants. Traveling across the rocky landscapes astride a yack or a horse, in a truck or by taxi, Monika tells the story of a tolerant Islam, Sufi traditions, and the happiness of being welcomed as a gift from a faraway land.
In Different Shades of Blue, Myriam Meloni set out to meet the inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa who, in search for a better life, flee their home countries in droves. In the hope of leaving behind violence, poverty, war, and lack of opportunities, they migrate north, and are often stuck for months, or even years, at the gateways to Europe, with a tentative passage to the “other side” as their only hope. In 2014 and 2015, Myriam Meloni met with and photographed some of these unfortunate travelers who are marooned in Morocco with no resources and hold on to the dream of getting to Europe.
Ingetje Tadros, in turn, offers a powerful picture of life “on the edge” in Aboriginal communities in Australia. With a home base in the town of Broome, Tadros travels to remote and forgotten regions of the country inhabited by Aboriginal communities. Her documentary photographs, informed by a profoundly ethical approach, bear witness to the dispossession and disenfranchisement suffered by the members of these communities. The photographer shows the vulnerability of these populations to the difficult challenges they face, including alcoholism, domestic abuse, suicide, and inadequate healthcare. Her prolonged presence has also enabled her to discover the enduring connections uniting the families to their land and to their spirituality.
Les Visas de l’ANI 2016
November 28 – December 16, 2016
Les Gobelins—École de l’Image
73 Boulevard Saint-Marcel
75013 Paris
France
