Perpignan is a southern French city near the Mediterranean coast and the border with Spain. With a population of around 120,000, it's pretty slow-paced for most of the year. But all that changes for a couple of weeks in late summer, when it suddenly becomes the world capital of photojournalism.
Churches, convents, even a former prison get turned into galleries, and almost twice the town's population again turns up to experience the most immersive pictures of wars, famines and everyday life the profession has to share.
Visa pour l'Image, aka The International Festival of Photojournalism, was the creation of one man, and this week we sadly lost him. Jean-François Leroy died on August 31, of cancer, at his home in Paris, aged just 69.
He lived to see this year's 38th edition of Visa open, and although he wasn't well enough to attend, was fully involved in selecting the programme. That included choosing the headline exhibition: a retrospective of the work by the French photographer, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Raymond Depardon.
Why Visa matters
Launched in 1989 with the backing of Roger Thérond, the editor of Paris Match, Visa pour l'Image has proved to be far more than just a way of extending Perpignan's tourist season. For many, it's been an professional lifeline: a free, public festival where those with no gallery representation or book deal can still get their work seen by picture editors, agencies and juries.
That ethos of supporting photographers is firmly in the festival's DNA, not least because Leroy came up through the trade himself. Born in Paris in 1956, he first shot assignments for Sipa Press before moving into editing at Photo Magazine, where he became editor-in-chief. However, he judged his own pictures harshly and decided his real talent lay in championing other people's.
That instinct for spotting and backing talent became the foundations on which Visa pour L'image has prospered: discover young photographers, celebrate the ones already known, and rediscover the historic ones the industry has let slip.
It made him plenty of friends and just as many people who found him exhausting. Tributes this week describe a tall, chain-smoking, skull-ring-wearing figure who could be tough and critical. But he was also someone who changed lives: the French photographer Axelle de Russé recalled hanging up on him, thinking his phone call telling her she'd won a Visa award was a prank.
What makes his death particularly poignant is the theme he chose for this, his final festival: "Reality strikes back", a direct response to the threat of AI-generated imagery to the profession. He leaves the festival team pledging to keep Perpignan "a beacon for photojournalists". Long may it continue.
