A few days ago, we received an email from Jacques Revon, a wonderful character and humanist photographer. He wrote: “Dear Jean-Jacques. At a time when intolerance is gaining ground, I would simply like to invite you to take a moment and look at these pictures of a peaceful family I had the good fortune of encountering and who obligingly agreed to pose for my Rolleiflex. It was 1967; we were in the countryside, near Roanne, in the department of Loire, in France. At the time, I was apprenticed to my father as a photographer and was already sure that the most important thing in my life would be encountering others and listening and sharing in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Wouldn’t it be possible to ask in one of your upcoming posts that photographers submit images which would offer a humanist perspective on their everyday lives and which would show that people are meant to live together, rather than shut out the world around them?”
Jacques is absolutely right. At a time when intolerance, insolence, and fear of the other seem to triumph around us, it is our duty to open our journal to “positive humanism images .” What a beautiful idea: rallying around our passion, photography, a universal language, which, since its invention, has helped combat inequality, oppression, and injustice, and to forge a dialog between people.
We invite all photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, good and bad, non-photographers too, fat and slim, short and tall, black-, yellow-, white-, and red-skinned, homosexual, heterosexual, and transsexual, ugly and beautiful, young and old, rich and poor, conformists and outsiders, anyone and everyone who believes, like Jacques Revon, that to meet people who are different is an opportunity, we invite them to send us photographs representing humanism, understanding, and generosity, whatever the epoch, geographical location, technique, colors, or subjects.
We will publish them, together, as a collective of voices united in an appeal for tolerance.
Jean-Jacques Naudet
Please send your photographs to [email protected].
