Le Palais des Congrès is starting to come alive. On the second floor, a few dozen stands are coming together.

Monday September 3

16h00 – “I was cleaning up my office in New York before I left and found a list of all the agencies at Perpignan five years ago. I kept it as a souvenir,” says Jean-Pierre Pappis, the founding director of the Polaris agency. Dramatic pause. “There were forty agencies here.”

Across from Polaris, at the Sipa press stand, Fehrit Duziol is hanging agency photos. “I’ve been here since yesterday. Mete Zhinoglu, Deputy Director General of Sipa will be here tonight, and Erik Monjalous on Wednesday.”

Over at Cosmos Images, all the photos have already been put up, and IP3 PRESS, the agency founded by Rémi Ochlik, is finishing the installation of its first stand at Visa pour l’Image. I can’t find Fedephoto. All those Perpignan regulars, like abaca, are nowhere to be seen at the Palais des Congrès.

In the wind outside the empty Palais des Congrès Jean-François Leroy is waiting on the local news for a live interview. Mathias Hobeniche from the 2nd Bureau is worried, “If they make him wait too long...” He’s happy that the Franco-German cultural television station Arte has covered the festival. “We were hoping for TF1 and France 2,” the country’s biggest network, “but no luck.”

21h30 – Le Campo Santo is filling up for the first evening of projections presented by the master of the house, accompanied by a new partner, Pascale Bourgaux.

Tuesday September 4

9h00 – Breakfast with Doug Menuez and his wife. He’s as friendly and as open as I might have guessed from the conference he gave the day before. We compare experiences. For fifteen years (1985 – 2000) he covered the pioneers of Silicon Valley. I was writing during the same time period, but about the French Minitel.

“Ah, the Minitel!” he cried! “All the engineers in Silicon Valley were familiar with the Minitel. They found it fascinating.”

Read the full text of Michel Puech’s journal on the French version of the Journal.