He has just arrived in the Llémena Valley, between the Gironès and La Garrotxa mountains, after a long journey from Germany by van. He hasn't even parked for ten minutes. It's the journey he makes accompanied by two bicycles and his dog Omali—which in Swahili means "treasure" or "something valuable"—every time he seeks a few days of rest between weeks of work travel. "Llémena is my refuge between wars," he admits. This year he has been to Lebanon, Syria, Acapulco (Mexico), and will soon return to Mosul (Iraq). He barely remembers it; he has to check his phone to list it all. "And 2025 has been peaceful compared to before," he says.

"For a long time, the main criticism of the festival was that it was too dark, too violent, too pessimistic. Unfortunately, we were ahead of our time." With this phrase, Jean-François Leroy, director of Visa pour l'Image, heads this year's festival program. "If you watch television and read the newspapers, you'll see that the world is dark. Our goal is to show the real world. Not princesses, not soccer players: the real world," he tells ARA.

The boys and girls from the ARA Journalism Campus went out, accompanied by the ARA photojournalist and photography professor at the IEFC Peter Virgil, to report on the El Prat de Llobregat Weekly Market. Located in the Sant Cosme neighborhood, next to the Fundesplai headquarters and hostel, the young photojournalists documented the activities and the people who bring this market to life every Thursday. With their photographs and texts, they bring us closer to the reality of a tough and traditional profession in our country.

British woman Alice Seeley Harris (1870-1970) entered the Congolese forest with her husband in 1898. As a missionary with the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, Alice carried the "word of God," but also a primitive Kodak camera that increasingly suits her. She witnessed and documented the crimes committed by the Force Publique (FP), which, on behalf of the Belgian King Leopold II, committed all kinds of atrocities in Congo.

"My father didn't whisper, he shouted, and that's why his photographs move us so much," explains Agustina Bosch, the eldest of the four daughters of the photographer, anthropologist, and artist Carlos Bosch (Buenos Aires, 1945–2020). He was certainly a passionate man because nothing stopped him. In November 1976, while walking through the center of Madrid with his cameras hanging around his neck, he saw a group of fascist men and women from Fuerza Nueva board a bus to go to Paracuellos de Jarama. He made up the story that he was the son of a Francoist soldier and accompanied them. It wouldn't be the last time, because for three years he infiltrated many events of that far-right group. Some of the photographs, where you can see how he gets very close to his lens because he was working with a 35mm camera, can be seen in Broadcast on Transition. Carlos Bosch. 1976–1981. The exhibition, which is part of the Lumínico festival, can be visited until September in the National Archives of Catalonia.

Catalan photographer Samuel Nacar (Barcelona, ​​1992) has been awarded the World Press Photo 2025 prize for a photojournalism project on Syrian prison survivors. The photo essay, entitled The shadows already have a name and published in the magazine 5W, is an account of the torture suffered by men imprisoned during the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad. Nacar is one of 42 regional winners of the international photojournalism competition, which today announced the winners from six global regions: Africa; Asia-Pacific and Oceania; Europe; Central and North America; South America; and Western, Central, and Southern Asia. The award for the best photograph of the year will be announced on April 17.