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| Telerama, May 68 special issue, April 2008, France |
FNAC Compilation, 2008, France |
Very few major events remain ingrained in our memory through the images of a single photographer – such as those taken on D’Day by Robert Capa on the beaches of Normandy. Rightfully, the French — and the world for that matter — visually define the May 1968 student uprising in Paris through the photographs of Gilles Caron. A daring 28 year-old photojournalist, who had barely been in the trade for a couple of years and who would go missing in Cambodia two years later, he left us with an extraordinary legacy that includes his coverage of the Six Day and Vietnam wars (1967), the haunting secession attempt of Biafra from Nigeria (1968), the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechkoslovakia (1969).
Over the last two months newspapers, magazines, books, and television programs have been looking back with abundance at the turmoil that engulfed France forty years ago and deeply changed the country’s political, social and cultural landscape. More than 120 covers and pages bearing Caron’s photographs have so far been printed in French publications alone.
Click here to see a more extensive gallery of Caron’s published work.
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| El Pais, April 19, 2008, Spain |
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| © Kristen Ashburn |
I Am Because We Are, a documentary written and produced by Madonna, and featuring the still photography of Contact member Kristen Ashburn (also a contributing producer of the film), premiered April 24th at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film describes Madonna’s journey through Malawi and explores the lives of a few of the country’s one million-plus children who have been orphaned by AIDS. Kristen Ashburn who has been working for more than five years on a long-term project on AIDS throughout Africa, traveled with the film makers through Malawi. (More on her past work in previous news posts).
President Bill Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Dr. Paul Farmer lend insight into the story of Malawi as the film endeavors to uncover what lies in the hearts of the children of this small African nation, how this affects all of us, and what we can do to help future generations.
Click here for more information on the film and showtimes during the festival.
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| © Kristen Ashburn |
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| Clockwise from top-right: Robert Frank and Charlie LeDuff in Pingyao; Pingyao Diesel Factory exhibit; Vanity Fair story. |
| Photographs © Ed Keating |
Fifty years after Les Americains, the world’s most famous and influential photography book was published in France by Robert Delpire, Vanity Fair paid tribute to the legendary Robert Frank, 83, in their April 2008 issue. “Robert Frank’s Unsentimental Journey” revisited the photographer’s life and thoughts on the occasion of his first trip to the People’s Republic of China. Accompanied by his wife, the artist June Leaf, Frank attended the sixth installment of the Pingyao International Photography Festival.
Vanity Fair’s Charlie LeDuff, whose article was accompanied by photographs from Ed Keating, described the tremendous fanfare that greeted the octogenarian, who has published a dozen books and made twenty-five films, and the impact of his work. “Frank intellectually changed photography – that is, what a photographer was supposed to look at …[he] snatched photography from the landscapists and the fashion portraitists…”
In Pingyao, his groundbreaking book, each page blown up to 30×45 inches, found a whole new audience. Frank’s victorious visit to China was organized by Contact Press Images, with Robert Pledge curating both Frank’s exhibit and a retrospective on the work of Li Zhensheng, along with three additional presentations (see previous Contact News entry)
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| June Leaf and Robert Frank in Pingyao. |
© Ed Keating |
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| From Eyes of Salamanca |
2007 © Juliana Beasley |
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Juliana Beasley received second place in the Prix de la Photographie Paris‘ (PX3) Human Condition photo competition for Eyes of Salamanca, her project documenting Mennonites living in Mexico. She also won three honorable mentions for her long-term work, Rockaways, and for two portraits, Victoria Blue and Texas Royale.
According to PX3’s website, the goal of the competition is to “document the wide spectrum of peoples’ ways of life around the world.”
© Stefan Postles
© Stefan Postles
The events of May ‘68 constitute a milestone in France’s contemporary history. Much of the visual memory of this tumultuous time rests on iconic photographs made by Gilles Caron. The city of Bordeaux’s “Mai 68- Au Jour Le Jour” exhibition presents 135 photographs by Caron, then a member of the Gamma agency he helped found a year earlier, Bruno Barbey of Magnum, and Jean Dieuzaide of Rapho. While Caron and Barbey photographed the student protests, riots, and general strike in Paris, Dieuzaide covered the upheaval in the town of Toulouse. The exhibition also puts on display posters and flyers from the 68’ protest movements that nearly overturned the regime of President Charles de Gaulle.
