PERPIGNAN, FRANCE.- The 15th Festival International of Photojournalism at Perpignan opens today. Over the years we have been told repeatedly that photography is dead; dead and buried by television.  But the war in Iraq has certainly provided startling proof of the opposite.  And that must be the sole, and fairly paltry benefit gained from this sorry turn of current affairs.  Television has gone from serious reporting - remember the war in Vietnam - to the "non-reporting" of the first Gulf War.  Now we have moved into the era of majorettes reporting on this particular war.(1)  Come on!  Let’s be sensible!  Who are we fooling?  Who would we have believe that the Webcam shots flooding onto screens night and day are actually news?  At the very most, this is televised video-surveillance. It may be entertaining for reality TV, but verges on the obscene when presented as news.  Both Al-Jazeera and Fox News had the same footage; only the commentary changed.  But let’s be clear:  I am not making an all-out attack on reporters out in the field working for televising stations.  I know they are there too and that they are committed; and also, unfortunately, that they paid a heavy toll reporting for us.  But I have the feeling that we will have to wait for the photographers to come back home before we get the pictures.

It is obviously too early to draw any conclusions from the new concept (I was going to write "aberration") of the "embedded journalist". At the symposium held in Perpignan last year, discussion turned to the war likely in Iraq, and Edgar Roskis from Le Monde Diplomatique argued that photographers should refuse to take any shots which might be imposed on them.  At the time I thought he had overstepped the mark, that this was taking things too far.  But where is the news when the person is in a tank with no freedom of movement?  One answer, and no doubt a valid one, is that the reporters in Baghdad were also restricted in their movements, which is true, but I am sure that pictures will come out:  pictures taken without making concessions, showing the photographer’s ambition to report in his or her own way.

In Perpignan, photographers will be there, speaking freely, telling us what they have seen and experienced.  Minds will be more lucid and those who were willing to "crawl into bed" with the armed forces will have woken up by then. Jean-François Leroy.

At the time of writing, nine journalists had died while reporting on the war in Iraq. We wish to pay tribute to them: Julio Anguita Parrado - El Mundo; Tarek Ayoub - Al-Jazeera; Michael Kelly - Washington Post; Christian Liebig – Focus; Taras Protsyuk – Reuters; José Kouso - Tele 5; Terry Lloyd – ITN; Paul Moran - Autralian Broadcasting Corporation; and Kaveh Golestan – BBC. A further two are still reported missing: Frédéric Nerac – ITN and Hussein Othman – ITN.

The event features the following photographers: Odd Andersen / AFP - A young-old experienced photographer Odd Andersen covers his first story at the age of 12. Using an illegal police scanner he catches a story, rides to a crime site and sells his first photograph to a local paper. Getting his press card at 17, Odd has been then traveling across the world to cover major stories. The retrospective of his work starts with the Gulf War and guides us through the Balkans, Rwanda,
Mozambique, South Africa, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jean-Gabriel Barthélemy / Sipa Press - Prisons of Toulouse - Saint Michel prison in Toulouse, built in 1870, was recently described by the secretary of state in charge of prisons as unworthy of the Republic.  Since then, the 480 prisoners there have been transferred to the new prison in Seysses, 20 kilometers from Toulouse. The new prison was designed for 596 inmates and already has 696 beds with some cells holding twice the number originally planned.  Saint-Michel now houses prisoners on day parole, but may soon open up again for new full-time inmates.

James Edward Bates - Ku Klux Klan - The Ku Klux Klan is an organization which first emerged around 1865.  Many people think the Klan disappeared in the 1960s, with the civil rights movements in the United States, but unfortunately they are mistaken. James Edward Bates provides proof with his report on the Ku Klux Klan in the early 21st century.

Zohra Bensemra / Reuters – Algeria - Since 1991, Visa pour l’Image has been committed to showing the dark years and civil war -  although never officially called a civil war - which left such scars on Algeria.  With the situation apparently settling down, our goal was to go back over all these events, as seen through the eyes of an Algerian photographer, Zohra Bensemra, who has always been in the thick of it.

Philip Blenkinsop / Vu - Laos : the Secret War continue - The USA recruited the Hmong to combat the North Vietnamese in Laos. When the US pulled out of South Vietnam in 1975, they also withdrew their support from Laos and the Hmong. Hiding in the mountains, the last remnants of this forgotten army continue to fight for their lives to this day.

Tom Craig  -Nobody’s Priority - The Youth of Africa -Modern-day sub-Saharan Africans have the odds of life stacked against them… Issues we all know about: AIDS, famine, civil unrest, polio, unstable economies, corrupt leaders, drought, lack of drinking water, landmines, malaria, ineffective health services… Just reading this list makes one wonder how any African can make it past the age of 35 ; the truth is, nearly half of them don’t.

Sophia Evans / nb pictures - Dirty oil business - Sophia Evans, who won the 2002 Canon Female Photojournalist Award presented by the AFJ [Association des Femmes Journalistes], reported on the social and environmental effects of the major oil companies moving into the delta of the Niger River (Nigeria).

Tim Georgeson / Cosmos for National Geographic France - The Circus - Whatever happened to the good old circus of our childhood days? In France, the Ministry for Culture celebrated the "year of the circus" in 2002 to promote circus arts.  Tim Georgeson has observed the small community and their lifestyle, the solidarity and uncertainty which are part of the everyday life of these nomadic performers.

Elizabeth Gilbert - Broken spears - The Masai people are well known as a tribal people in Africa, raising cattle, hunting lions and waging war, and are a source of fascination for the outside world with their mysterious culture and traditions.  Yet they may well disappear if we persist in turning a blind eye to the annihilation of the African continent. Elizabeth Gilbert offers a warning, taking us on a magnificent journey through Kenya and Tanzania.

Julien Goldstein / L’Oeil Public - Sovietland:  Transdnistria, a live museum - The Republic of Transdnistria, between Ukraine and Moldova, is a remnant of Soviet totalitarianism, and a genuine, live museum. Sovietland is a voyage of discovery, showing Russian rule, dictatorship, statues of Lenin, and the people, resigned to their fate, hungry, living in fear, with no basic rights.
Commission:  Centre National des Arts Plastiques - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

Jan Grarup / Rapho - The Children of Hebron - After Jan Grarup’s exhibition on the children in Ramallah at Visa pour l’Image in 2001, the Festival is pleased to present the second part of the project on the children of Hebron. 450 ultra-religious Jews, most born in North America, live in the center of Hebron, surrounded by 130 000 Palestinians on the West Bank.  The children in the community and their parents are convinced that Hebron belongs to them;  they lead the same sort of life as other children their age, but are also part of adult warfare, a war over which they have no real control.

Jacques Grison / Rapho - The Last Miners in France - Jacques Grison spent much of the past five years contemplating times past in his home region of Lorraine in North-eastern France.  Here, personal identity, tradition and social links were once bound together by coal, but these are now fading.  Jacques Grison gives us an opportunity to make the last ride down into these dark reaches, to see the end of an era, to share the final moments in these lives and also look towards the future for the younger generation which will not be going down into the mines. Commission:  Centre National des Arts Plastiques - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

Randy Olson / National Geographic Magazine - Shattered Sudan - Sudan is the largest country in Africa and is the land where a civil war between the Islamic north and African south has wreaked havoc on the scale of a World War:  two and a half million have been killed in the conflict.  The people in the south have no power, while the people in the north have been running a "perfect war" losing none of their troops.  The north keeps the southerners at bay by bombing them, burning their harvest and threatening them with weapons.  They take their children and force them to fight alongside the northern army, against their own families.

Kishor Parekh - Banglades : a brutal birth - On March 25, 1971, negotiations on the autonomy of eastern Bengal were suspended and then came nine months of horror and brutality perpetrated on the Bengali people by the Pakistani army.  The atrocity and suffering defy description.  On December 17, the Bangladeshi flag was raised in Dacca!  This was the birth of the nation of Bangladesh. The report, a revelation in itself, is the work of Kishor Parekh, an Indian war reporter who died in 1982 at the age of 52.

Stéphanie Pommez / Gamma - Traditional midwives of the Amazon - The Brazilian Ministry of Health estimates that today there are 60,000 traditional midwives spread across Brazil. They’re responsible for 15% of the nearly three million births registered every year. In the Amazon, geographical and social isolation from the rest of the country and its basic medical services, has forced communities to safeguard the tradition of midwives. These jungle flanked, multiracial communities grown out of indigenous tribes and northeast immigrants alike live alongside the Amazon basin, often several kilometers from their neighbours, without electricity or treated water and barely any social services.

Raghu Rai / Magnum Photos - Bhopal, portrait of a corporate crime - It all began on the night of December 2/3, 1984, when forty tons of poisonous gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India.  Three days later, more than 8000 had died and half a million were contaminated.  The death toll is currently estimated at 20 000.  While Union Carbide urged its staff to move out as quickly and as far as possible, local people were given assurances and told to stay.  Raghu Rai shows us the heart of one of the most tragic "corporate crimes" ever. Exhibition presented with support from the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - Délégation aux Arts Plastiques.

Santiago del Chile, 1973 / IMA / Vu - This exhibition looks back on the work of four Chilean photographers. It spans the period 11 September 1973 to 11 March 1990, the day the country’s President was first elected democratically since Salvador Allende. Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile was perhaps the period most frequently photographed in Latin America. The images presented by Marcelo Montecino, Hector López, Claudio Pérez and Juan Carlos Cáceres illustrate the Chileans’ daily acts of resistance - they show the view from the inside. These are pictures the world has never seen before.

Damir Sagolj / Reuters - On The Wire - Damir Sagolj is a news photographer, working to daily deadlines. But he portrays events in the faces of bystanders, not through the eyes of  actors who are on centre stage. Damir works on the fringes of death, yet always finds a spark of life. He is a realist and will not conjure hope where none exists. The sparks he sees are often fading.

Massimo Sciacca / Contrasto / Rea - Manila Cemetery - North Cemetery is the largest in Manila, covering 30 000 square meters;  it was built at the time of Spanish rule, and over the last thirty years has become home for many homeless people who have taken over the tombs and vaults, turning them into homes.  More than 500 families now live here, making the cemetery a small village operating autonomously with its own shops and restaurants, water and electricity supply.  Manila City Council has attempted to stop the settlement, but tolerates the situation aware that it is the last hope for these homeless people to find shelter.

Christine Spengler / Corbis Sygma - Years of War - Christine Spengler decided to become a war reporter one day in 1970:  she was in Chad, taking her first photo of barefoot Toubou fighters firing Kalashnikovs at French helicopters. Visa pour l’Image is pleased to be presenting Christine Spengler’s war photographs.  She has been there on the spot in many wars, including Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Lebanon, Eritrea and Iran. Exhibition presented with support from the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - Délégation aux Arts Plastiques.

Jonathan Torgovnik – Bollywood - The film industry in India, better known by the name of "Bollywood", is more than just entertainment, and verges on the religious experience.  More than 800 new feature films are released every year, and every day 14 million people pour into the movie theaters.  Indian films have won the hearts, minds and souls of the entire nation.

John Trotter - Along the Colorado River’s delta - For a thousand years and more, the Cucapa people, modest Mexican farmers referred to as the "river people", have been living, hunting and fishing along the delta of the Colorado River. After exploring the delta in northern Mexico, John Trotter wanted to raise awareness on the effects of the unbridled development by Western American construction and business companies along the river.  Sprawling cities, golf courses and low-cost manufacturing companies have moved in, ruining both the lifestyle of the local people and the river itself which is of crucial importance in an area with very low rainfall.

Kai Wiedenhöfer / Lookat Photos / Rapho - Perfect Peace : the Palestinians from Intifada to Intifada
For more than ten years, Kai Wiedenhöfer (born in Germany) has been living and taking photographs in the occupied territories.  He has learnt Arabic, studied the Middle East and endeavored to understand the way local people think.  His report presents the everyday life of children, men and women, of the victims and protagonists in the Intifada, showing their dogged struggle against occupation and their hope for peace one day, peace achieved through mutual understanding which, alas, at the moment, seems remote or highly unlikely.