Deeply disappointed in Jean Francois Leroy on how badly this was handled. There has been some controvery associated with an exhibition of my Africa work that Visa Pour LImage mounted at this years festival. Let me state that I was honored to have been selected for exhibition this year; I have had bodies of work projected three times before at Visa and have been awarded the Visa DOr in 1996 for News Photography (my coverage of Africa). My professional record, achievements and associations stand as testament for a life spent as guardian of stories of the downtrodden and dispossesed. I have always looked forward to attending Visa and have enjoyed a cordial and strong professional relationship with its director. I am therefore very distressed and deeply hurt that I Visa characterized me as irresponsible and unprofessional in the French press. I reserve all rights at my disposal to keep my good name intact. Visa director Jean-Francois Leroy insisted on creating the exhibit edit which I agreed to. He made his selection from my work that had been captioned in detail. At every juncture, when asked for wall captions or intro panel text, I submitted in English. No one raised any questions or issues nor asked that verbiage be changed. With respect to my Rwanada work, I have always been consistent and clear, in my floor talk at my exhibition and in the intro panel and wall captions, I indicated that I was not present for the barbaric and murderous rampage of the genocide that took place. I was responding to cover the humanitarian crisis -- the mass movements of people -- as they fled Rwanda for Goma. As photojournalist, I responded instinctually documenting life on the run, people frightened, burdened with possessions thirsty, hungry and fatigued. Later, along the roads and in the camps when disease took hold, it did so indiscriminately. A journalist from a French publication attended my floor talk and seemed fixated on the wall captions and began leveling accusations of revisionism. I told him my pictures were mainly of Hutus; they fled to Goma. I talked about the time line, the refugee crisis that was unfolding. He seemingly took in nothing I said, bent on advancing an agenda. I explained that my role was not to take sides but to document the horrors I was witnessing. I would never say (and did not say) the absolutely fabricated quote atttriubuted to me in his piece: (hutu, tutsi, its not my problem). In fact, I said it was worlds problem for doing nothing. I told him Clintons biggest regret was not doing anything. The journo didnt listen. This 25 year old journo reflected to me that all Hutus were guilty. He made comments to me that indicated that he had no idea how enormous the camps were. His recap of my words and quotes attributed to me were all all cut and paste, various words plucked and re-organized out of context to fit his agenda. In fairness, I did say that my captions could have been clearer to have include the Tutsi even though they were scaresly in my show. He ultimately used that admission as evidence of my negligence. It is no secret that the French have been nursing 20 years of deep self-doubt from their well-documented support of the Hutu-led government prior to the genoicide. France also provided military training to Hutu youth militias, which were among the governments primary means of operationalizing the genocide. With this regional historical burden, the newspapers piece took hold. The writer demanded that Visa answer accusations that it was exihibiting revisionist history. (The French newspasper Liberation subsequently did a piece too; no one sought me out for a comment). Visa responded in time-honored fashion: they blamed it all on me. I felt thrown under the bus. I was never consulted, confronted nor questioned by anyone at Visa relative to the allegations leveled at them and I was still in Perpignan when this went down. In turn, Visa -- the festival organized to champion and honor photojournalism -- simply responded in the press by denigrating and questioning my professionalism. After that they summarily censored my exhibition removing many if not all of the Rwanada work from the show without consulting me. I found out about it after the fact in terse email from the Visa director. A subsequent email from Visa agreed whole-heartily that the journalist had an agenda that was really focused against Visa and not me. At this writing, I have not received an apology just the reassurance that my exihibtion would not be re-enstated. Such is the state of courage and cowardise in photojournalism festivals -- score: Cowardise: 1/Courage: Zero. Yunghi Kim
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 22:43:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015