Correspondent / behind the news

Journalists do a lot of waiting in Cannes. Until we rush frantically like someone trying to catch the last train to Salvation. Then we wait some more. And that’s the way it is during the world’s most glam film festival: bouts of downtime punctuated by adrenaline-pumping excitement of the highest caliber. Anne Chaon, AFP's cinema correspondent until earlier this year, looks back on what it's like to cover Cannes.

AFP Photo/Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Armstrong: The Bernie Madoff of sport

"Armstrong cheated the Tour de France, the fans, the media, all those who believed his performances were for real and, worst of all, he betrayed his sport." So writes former Tour de France director Jean-Marie Leblanc in a new book, published this week, on the event he oversaw from 1989 to 2005. "He will go down as the Bernard Madoff of sport."

AFP’s Tokyo bureau chief Jacques Lhuillery heads to the French ambassador’s home to meet famed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, who is returning to the musical scene after a long absence to fight cancer. (AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno)

French President Francois Hollande is under fire for a tax-fraud scandal and a moribund economy, but there is at least one place he can turn to for steadfast support: Mali. AFP’s Stephane Jourdain finds a wave of pro-French fervor in the former French colony, where French troops are leading a military offensive against Islamist rebels who less than a year ago controlled half of the country. (AFP Photo/John MacDougall)

Two years ago Agnes Dupont de Logonnes and her four children, aged 13 to 20, were killed – shots to the body and head -- and then buried on the family property in Nantes, western France. The quintuple murder, still unsolved, has haunted the country ever since. Correspondent Alexandra Turcat, who covered the story for AFP, looks back. (AFP Photo/Jean-Sebastien Evard)

AFP Photo/Fred Dufour

Femen gets a kick in the pants (but not on Facebook)

Rarely a week goes by without a Femen protest somewhere in world. Originating in Ukraine five years ago, the expanding network of feminist activists bare their breasts – often inscribed with slogans – to champion women’s rights or decry corruption and what they see as repressive religious institutions and dogma. This week, the Grand Mosque of Paris was on their hit list. The AFP photo above circulated widely on the Internet, generating a lot of 'shares' and comments on AFP's French-language Facebook page. Until, that is, Facebook yanked it. 

Infested with rats and beset with chronic violence, the Baumettes prison in the southern port city of Marseille leapt onto France’s front pages in December after a shocking government report -- complete with photos -- was made public. AFP correspondent Wafaa Essalhi and AFP photographer Anne-Christine Poujoulat got a first-hand view. (AFP Photo/Anne-Christine Poujoulat)

AFP Photo/K. Tribouillard

Desert patrol: Tracking Islamists in Mali

"Scorching heat from above (the sun) and below (stones); black rocks so jagged they rip the military apparel on the soldiers with whom I am embedded; soot-like sand so invasive it sears my eyes and jams their guns; an enemy – never visible, always nearby – hell-bent on carrying out a holy war." This is how AFP photographer Kenzo Tribouillard describes the mountainous region along the Mali-Algeria border where he followed French troops tracking Islamist fighters. Here are his photos, and his report. 

Tay Garnett. The name may not ring a bell, but you've surely seen at least one of the dozens of movies he made during Hollywood's golden age. "The Postman Always Rings Twice", perhaps? During a five-decade career, Garnett worked with Dietrich, Harlow, Heywood, Monroe, Bogart, Gable, Taylor, Mitchum and dozens of other single-name stars. And as a swan song, he compiled testimonials from the 20th century's greatest directors in a book as remarkable for what's between the covers as its back-story. (Photo/Tiela Garnett)

AFP Photo/Josep Lago

Photography + ? = Journalism

Photojournalists will sometimes say of a picture that it is more ‘photography’ than ‘journalism’, by which they mean, it seems, that the image has an inherent, stand-alone quality even when shorn of a specific news context. In other words, it’s just a good pic. So what is it, exactly, that determines when a photo becomes journalism? (AFP Photo/Josep Lago)

AFP Photo/Patrick Baz

Hipstamatic: too hip for photojournalism?

A tsunami of digital technology has reconfigured the news media landscape in more ways than one, eroding once solid firewalls between professionals and citizens, blogs and newspapers, fact and opinion. Boundaries have shifted in photojournalism too, with smart phones and digital apps moving from the margins toward the heart of the profession. What’s a news agency to do?   

Stumbling across websites in French on the highly-charged subject of abortion that seemed to be neutral but were anything but led AFP reporters Julie Charpentrat and Isabelle Tourne to dig deeper into the increasingly sophisticated tactics of France’s anti-abortion activists, who have clearly taken a page from the playbook of their US counterparts. 

Unmasking a controversy in Mali

This image captured by AFP photographer Issouf Sanogo in Mali quickly caused a stir in the French army, with top brass condemning the masked soldier’s behaviour as “unacceptable.” But the story behind the striking image, taken as French and Malian troops headed toward Mali’s Islamist-held north in a bid to regain control of the immense desert area, is rather more banal than the photograph might suggest.

On the day that the world will finally hear Lance’s Armstrong’s long-awaited mea culpa about doping, confided to US TV personality Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive pre-recorded television interview, AFP sports journalist Justin Davis reminisces on the US cycling legend’s troubled relationship with the media, including a couple of head-on clashes of his own. (AFP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure)

AFP PHOTO/Francois-Xavier Marit

The ripple effect: Backstroke from below

Between now and the end of the year, AFP is highlighting some of the stand-out images from 2012.

Today, photographer François-Xavier Marit talks about covering the swimming at the London Olympics, where these photos were taken remotely by camera at the bottom of the pool.

AFP PHOTO/Jeff Pachoud

No rest in Afghanistan

Between now and the end of the year, AFP is highlighting some of the stand-out images from 2012.

In this, the third of the series, photojournalist Jeff Pachoud, based in Lyon in southeast France, talks about how he captured this surreal image of a French soldier standing guard on the roof of an Afghan police barracks near Kabul.

AFP Photo/Gerard Julien

The Marseille Kiss…

More than 60 years ago, photographer Rober Doisneau captured an image of a couple kissing on the streets of Paris that helped seal the French capital’s reputation as the most romantic city in the world. Today AFP released another picture – already dubbed “The Marseille Kiss” (“Le Baiser de Marseille”) – that is generating thousands of “Likes”, comments and retweets around the world. But unlike Doisneau’s iconic “Le Baiser de l’hotel de ville” (“The town hall kiss”), which was semi-staged, the AFP pic of two young women provocatively locking lips in front of a group of anti-gay marriage demonstrators in France’s largest southern city is a candid shot. “I was just in the right place and the right time,” AFP photographer Gerard Julien explains…

After a trip-threatening delay caused by a missing doodad on a lifeboat, AFP’s intrepid Sophie Lautier set sail from the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion Thursday aboard the research & supply vessel “Marion Dufresne” for a one-month expedition into the roiling, frigid waters between Africa and Antarctica. Sophie will keep a running log of her excellent adventure on AFP Correspondent. Welcome aboard. (AFP Photo/Sophie Lautier)

Never, arguably, has a French president slid so far so fast towards unpopularity as Nicolas Sarkozy, who failed this year in his bid to win a second five-year term in office. Philippe Alfroy, one of AFP's two “Elysee” correspondents, describes what it was like covering France’s hyperactive “hyper-president,” whose ambivalence toward the media vacillated between charm offensives and outbursts of contempt. (AFP Photo Gerard Cerles)

Top level road cyclists are still chasing the yellow jersey of the 99th edition of the Tour de France, arguably the most arduous professional sporting event in the world. AFP specialist Jean Montois, who has covered every Tour since 1983, tells us how drug scandals and big money have taken their toll, driving a wedge between reporters and cyclists, and breeding cynicism among fans. (AFP Photo/Joel Sagat)