Bringing together some of the biggest names and most powerful images in photo-journalism, the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan, France attracts close to 3,000 professionals and 200,000 visitors each year and is considered the greatest photojournalist forum in the world. For the 30 exhibitions presented, director/curator Jean-François Leroy selects some of the most thought-provoking photographic reports of the past year. In his exhibition “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl” - now his third at Visa Pour l’Image - Gerd Ludwig revisits the region of the world’s worst nuclear accident. As 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of the disaster, Gerd’s photographs of the lingering contamination, the treacherous cleanup, and the lasting health defects document how the shadow of Chernobyl continues to darken lives – socially, environmentally, and physically.

On assignment for National Geographic magazine, the thawing of bureaucratic barriers in Ukraine enabled Gerd to move freely within the Exclusion Zone and delve deeper into Chernobyl reactor than any other Western photographer. Some of the most memorable of the 45 photographs in this exhibit depict Chernobyl’s voiceless victims; they allowed their suffering to be documented solely in the hope that tragedies like Chernobyl be prevented in the future.

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