At the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan, Samuel Bollendorff shows the climate crisis in emojis

These poor, small, poorly framed, often blurry images are on display until Sunday, September 14, at the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan. They show a woman trying to get out of her car threatened by rising water in Zaragoza, Spain, in 2023. A family visiting their devastated home after the fires in Los Angeles, California, in early 2025. A young man left homeless after Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte in December 2024 and calling on the world for help. All punctuated by countless emojis and hashtags, and underscored by words full of rage, disbelief, and despair. Spectacular and banal images, which we increasingly encounter on our phones with each new disaster linked to climate change.

In a unique move, the festival, reserved for the cream of photojournalists, is dedicating one of its 26 exhibitions to these amateur photos: anonymous people whose lives have been disrupted by a fire, a typhoon, a flood, and who share their misfortune on social media. The images originally broadcast on their phones are presented in Perpignan on small glass plates aligned on the wall, "like a giant scroll," explains Samuel Bollendorff. It is this photographer and filmmaker who set up this project entitled "#paradise," in reference to the Californian town of Paradise , wiped off the map in 2018 after a devastating fire.

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