AFP in the news

Three AFP exhibitions at Visa pour l’Image

AFP, as it does every year, is attending the Visa pour l’Image photo festival in Perpignan from September 1 to 16.

This year no less than three of the 27 exhibitions on hand are devoted to AFP pictures.

You can also meet us at the Palais des Congrès, stall 17, during the festival’s professional week from September 3 to 9.

A thumbnail presentation of our pictures

Pedro Ugarte et Ed Jones

North Korea

North Korea, one of the world’s most secretive countries, in April invited hundreds of foreign reporters to witness celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of leader Kim Il-Sung and the controversial launch of a satellite, described abroad as a disguised ballistic missile test.

Pedro Ugarte and Ed Jones, based respectively in Hong Kong and Beijing, described their visit to the hardline communist state as « like travelling back in a time machine » to the Cold War era.

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Louisa Gouliamaki, Angelos Tzortzinis et Aris Messinis

The Shock Wave in Greece

The financial crisis has spread from Athens to most European capitals. If  a European country is in trouble, won’t it drag others in its fall ? Over the past two years, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund have put together three rescue packages to save Greece from bankruptcy in exchange for harsh savings. Austerity measures have prompted demonstrations and our Athens’ bureau photographers, Louisa Gouliamaki, Angelos Tzortzinis and Aris Messinis, have taken it in turns to witness months of violent social unrest, verging at times on civil war.

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Massoud Hossaini

Afghanistan : seen from the inside

December 6, 2011, Shiite pilgrims crowd a sanctuary where Ashura celebrations are underway. A bomb goes off. Fifty-four people are killed and 150 injured. Massoud Hossaini who is covering the religious festival is just yards away. The 30-year-old Afghan photographer presents not only his Pulitzer-prize winning picture, but illustrations of the ongoing war in his country and of the lives of ordinary Afghans in the capital and in remote villages.