The most prestigious award of the Visa pour l’image international photojournalism festival, the Visa d’or news, was awarded on Saturday 7 September in Perpignan to Palestinian photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) Mahmoud Hams, for his work on the war in Gaza.
The 44-year-old photographer, who has been working for AFP since 2003 in the Palestinian territory, thanked the jury for this award during a video exchange recorded with Jean-François Leroy, founding director of Visa pour l’image, and broadcast during the presentation of the prizes. “I hope the photographs we take will tell the world that this war and suffering must end.”Mahmud Hams stressed in a statement issued by the agency.
Mahmud Hams left Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip with his family in February 2024 and has since worked for the AFP in Qatar. “Mahmud and his colleagues, AFP photographers and journalists in the Gaza Strip, have done an extraordinary job in every sense”said Eric Baradat, deputy director of information at AFP who took the photo. “His testimony will be a milestone and will go down in history”he added.
Due to visa delays, she was unable to arrive in Perpignan in time to receive her award in person, but should travel to France in the coming weeks, said Stéphane Arnaud, AFP’s deputy central editor for photography, who accepted it on her behalf. Other nominees for the Visa d’Or news item were Ziv Koren for his work on the unprecedented attack launched by Hamas in Israel on October 7 and which sparked the war, Corentin Fohlen for his reporting on Haiti, at the heart of the war, and “gang power” and John Moore for his coverage of the ruthless war waged against drug trafficking in Ecuador.
Visa pour l’image, the leading international event dedicated to photojournalism, offers free exhibitions, screenings, meetings with photographers and debates every year during a professional week that opened on Monday and ended on Saturday. The 26 exhibitions opened to the public from 31 August and remain open until 15 September.
