Jean-François Leroy, Founding father of World’s Leading Photojournalism Pageant, Dies

Jean-François Leroy, the photographer who based Visa pour l’Image, the world’s main photojournalism competition in Perpignan, France, has died.

Leroy, who directed Visa pour l’Image for nearly 4 many years, died of most cancers in Paris on the age of 69. Under his management, the competition grew to become one of the vital vital occasions on this planet of press pictures.

“The entire Visa pour l’Image — Perpignan team and all of Jean-Francois Leroy’s family are deeply saddened to announce the death, on the morning of Monday, Aug 31, of the founder and historic director of the international photojournalism festival,” the competition group writes on its Instagram account. “He supported and brought to light photojournalists from all over the world.”

According to French news outlet Le Monde, Leroy was born in Paris in 1956. Leroy was launched to pictures by his aunt, the editor-in-chief of La Vie catholique, who let him experiment within the journal’s darkroom.

Leroy was a former Sipa Press photographer and contributed to Photo-Reporter, Le Photographe, and Photo-Revue. He later grew to become editor-in-chief of Photo Magazine, a place he held from 1985 to 1987, earlier than devoting himself to Visa pour l’Image.

According to Blind Magazine, Leroy was identified for his editorial rigor and dedication to journalistic integrity. He was a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres and a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite.

Over almost 4 many years, Leroy established Visa pour l’Image as a significant worldwide gathering for photojournalism. The competition is free and open to the general public and attracts greater than 220,000 guests to Perpignan yearly. It supplies a platform for photographers working within the subject and has awarded greater than $173,985 (€150,000) in prizes to photographers yearly.

Le Monde stories that Leroy watched with rising frustration because the monetary foundations of photojournalism started to erode. Newspapers and magazines had been reducing prices, photograph businesses had been disappearing, and photographers had been discovering it more and more troublesome to make a dwelling from their work. With conventional funding drying up, many turned to grants, NGOs and the artwork world to finance long-term initiatives. Against this backdrop, Visa pour l’Image took on an more and more vital function, providing photographers not solely a platform for his or her work but additionally awards, publicity and recognition because the trade’s outdated sources of assist started to vanish.

For the primary time in 38 years, Leroy was too sick to attend the opening of Visa pour l’Image on Saturday. Despite his sickness, Delphine Lelu, the managing director of Visa pour l’Image, tells Blind Magazine that Leroy took half “from A to Z in the preparation” of the 2026 version of the competition.