00:00Now, a leading international event dedicated to photojournalism,
00:04the 37th edition of Visa Polyimage in the south of France is currently underway.
00:09It offers snapshots of our world, highlighting many of its conflicts and catastrophes,
00:14with topics ranging from the wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine to climate change.
00:19To get more insight, we're joined now by photographer Samuel Bullendorf.
00:23Samuel, thanks so much for coming into studio and joining us here.
00:26It isn't the first time you've taken part in this festival.
00:30Can I start simply by asking you this year, is there any of the exhibitions,
00:34any of the photographs that have really struck a chord with you?
00:38Of course, there is the Gaza pictures, because as you know,
00:46it's really difficult for journalists to know, journalists can access there.
00:50And we have only the pictures of the journalists who are still alive in Gaza.
00:56And there were two exhibitions and a special screen show about what's happening there.
01:03And it's really important to be able to continue to see.
01:07And I hope they will struggle for continuing to give us access to what's happening there.
01:14Yeah, to have that testimony, that record of the atrocities,
01:17the annihilation of the people that's happening in Gaza.
01:20But let's maybe turn to your own offering this year.
01:23It's Hashtag, I believe.
01:25Hashtag Paradise is Gold.
01:26It's very different from what one would expect a photographer to propose.
01:31They're actually not your pictures at all.
01:33They are not my pictures, but I select it and I shoot pictures of my screen.
01:39But it has a field of reportage.
01:42But the idea, you're right, I'm a photographer.
01:46I've been traveling around the world a lot about climate change.
01:49No, sorry, about environmental issues.
01:53And many inquiries, which were really important because it was about ecocides or things like that.
02:00But to work about climate change, I was thinking,
02:04but I won't take planes and planes and planes to document something
02:09which is already documented by local photographers
02:12and also by the people who are affected by the pictures.
02:15That's why I decided for the last three years to collect pictures
02:21people are sharing or posting when they are affected by the catastrophe of the climate change.
02:30And how did you go about, you know, there's so much out there on social media.
02:34I mean, what were your criteria for selecting the pictures?
02:38First of all, the actuality.
02:40When something happens, I'm going to look for the pictures with an hashtag.
02:45So hashtag Paradise is linked to the city of Paradise,
02:50which has been destroyed by the fires in California three years ago.
02:56And that was the beginning of my work.
02:58And with those hashtags, I was looking for the pictures.
03:01And, you know, which is really important is also what people are sharing,
03:09the way they are reacting, the emojis, the comments and things like that
03:13they add on the pictures are really showing us a part of all humanity,
03:20the deny, the sideration, but also the complotism, the mysticism
03:27and all those reactions human beings have.
03:31And it's also a reaction that puts a little bit away the catastrophe itself.
03:38And it shows maybe why we are not reacting.
03:42Yeah.
03:43All that information.
03:44Yet.
03:44Yeah.
03:44That's I mean, I guess we feel we're reacting when we share things on social media.
03:48Yes, but the problem is that we are really we have information about the climate change.
03:55We it's documented by by the journalists, by the scientists and with the amateurs.
04:00But we are not changing.
04:03We should take really strong decision and or or politics and and the opinion is not strong enough.
04:12It's not maybe convinced enough that there is no way to to to no other way to to change the problem
04:22as changing a way of life.
04:24Is it in a way because we have too many photographs?
04:27I mean, in the past, there was, you know, the photographers that went into these areas
04:30that most of us didn't see and then their image had that power to stop you in your tracks.
04:35Yeah, you're right.
04:36We have totally changed our way of consuming the images, but it's a fact.
04:41And today we are living that way.
04:44So our job as photographers is also to think about that and to find ways of showing and bringing back
04:54the main stories on in the light of the media, on the on the way we are consuming the pictures.
05:02And it does.
05:02I have to say it does have a new effect when you see all we're watching it there,
05:06all those social media, small pictures put together the same picture through many different eyes in many ways.
05:12There was also one image you titled it Apocalypse, but I couldn't even make out what it was, I have to say.
05:17Sorry.
05:17There's one photograph you took and it was titled Apocalypse.
05:20Yeah.
05:20Just looks gray and cloudy and it could have been so many things.
05:23Yeah, because, you know, many people react with mysticism and they will think that God could change something of the climate change.
05:35And also this is important.
05:38I see you see the picture with prey in California, for example.
05:43Many people call for prey for LA or things like that, but it won't change the climate change.
05:50And this part of this mystic reaction is also an issue.
05:59So there is a kind of, there are kinds of typology of reaction and the mysticism and all those call for praise
06:08or this idea of the apocalypse or this is the end or things like that is really something which I think is not constructive.
06:19It's not the way we will be able to find a good reaction.
06:22Yeah, we need to regain that grip on reality in a new way, I guess.
06:26We seem to have lost it.
06:27Yes.
06:27And we see that Donald Trump just says that it's an act of God when children die in Texas with the fruits.
06:35So we are far from the solution.
06:38Samuel Vollendorf, it's been a pleasure to look at your images, something a bit different for us there.
06:42Thanks so much for coming in and joining us.
06:44Thank you very much.
06:45And just for other viewers, the Visaport Limage Festival runs in Perpignan until the 14th of this month.
06:50And it's free once you're there in the town to go and see a vast variety of exhibitions.
