The jury for Visas de l’ANI met at the Bar Floréal in Paris last month to choose this year’s winners. They made their selection from among fifteen portfolios submitted to the Visa pour l’image festival in September 2011.
The final selection included JM Lopez ’ reportage on starving children in Guatemala, Colin Delfosse on military sites in Kazakhstan, and Misha Freidman on the tuberculosis epidemic in former Soviet states. Their work will be exhibited at the Bar Floréal in Paris in September 2012.
The winner will be announced during the Visa pour l’image international festival of photojournalism in 2012 and will receive the 5000€ prize, awarded by PixPalace.

The jury members were Jean-François Leroy (Visa pour l’Image), Agnès Grégoire (Photo magazine), Elisabeth Hering (laboratoire Picto), Sylvaine Lecœur (Pix Palace), Armelle Canitrot (La Croix), Patrick Codomier (Agence Vu'), Ericka Weidmann (La Lettre de la Photographie), Philippe Delbauwe (Agence PictureTank), Andreina De Bei (Sciences et Avenir), Guillaume Herbaut (Photographer).

Famine in Guatemala
JM Lopez
In eastern Guatemala, in a region called the “dry corridor,” more than fifty children have died of malnutrition as a result of famine. The drought destroyed the wheat and grain harvests these populations depend on for survival. Approximately 50,000 found themselves in dire circumstances, compounded by their extreme poverty. Chronic malnutrition has a devastating effect on the physical and mental development of children. This undernourishment results in irreversible consequences that will handicap these children into adulthood. Doctors and teachers of public and private institutions, and NGOs, monitor the health of the most isolated indigenous communities. They are responsible for distributing food to the population and detecting the most severe cases of malnutrition.

Polygones – Kazakhstan
Colin Delfosse
Polygons are military zones spanning thousands of kilometers where the Soviet army once tested and improved its weaponry: ballistic missiles, nuclear bombs, biological and chemical weapons. Sary Shagan and Semipalatinsk were testing grounds for ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. Even today they continue to be the site of scientific and military research. But the impact of these polygons on the local population poses a problem. The many consequences include massive pollution, displaced communities, conflicts of interest between Russians and Kazakhs, and threats of radiation across hundreds of kilometers. The inhabitants of these zones live off the legacy of the Cold War: they sell the the metal from the military sites for scrap. Others die of radiation. Still others seek out less hostile land.

Tuberculosis in the Former Soviet Union
Misha Freidman
Tuberculosis is a deadly disease, especially in the former Soviet Union. Patients suffering from tuberculosis have become increasingly difficult to treat because the disease has grown highly resistant to medication. Health organizations have found that the populations affected by this illness fail to realize the seriousness of the disease, and put off seeking medical treatment. Unaware of how to respond to the disease, untreated patients contribute to the spread of this scourge. Stigmatized by their peers and abandoned by their families, they find themselves in “prison clinics” lacking the funds to care for them. Many patients are also infected with the AIDS virus, the result of extreme poverty that can lead to drug abuse and unprotected sex. Poorly treated, left to their own devices, most abandon all hope of leading a “normal life” and sink into depression. The mortality rates in these clinics are very high.