Three lives, three legacies: and a lifetime of gratitude

There is a particular kind of sadness that comes with the passing of people you have admired for much of your life, as David Corfield reflects...

For those of us who have spent our lives immersed in photography, film and visual storytelling, there are certain people who are more than names on a page. They are the figures whose work stopped us in our tracks, whose ideas challenged us, and whose extraordinary ability to make sense of the world inspired us to keep looking.

Recently, I have found myself reflecting on the deaths of three such figures: Jean-Luc Godard, Sebastião Salgado and Jean-François Leroy. Three very different men, working in different corners of the visual arts, but all of them profoundly influential in their own ways.

I was fortunate enough to meet each of them. I interviewed Godard in Paris, spent an afternoon with Salgado (above) in his studio, and knew Leroy for more than 15 years through my annual visits to Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan.

That good fortune brings its own complicated emotions. There is sadness, certainly, and a sense of loss. There is regret for conversations that will never happen and questions that will never be asked. But there is also something else: an overwhelming sense of gratitude that, through the twists and turns of a career in photography and journalism, I was able to spend time with people whose work had already earned them a place in my personal pantheon of heroes.

Jean-Luc Godard: An afternoon in Paris with a cinematic revolutionary

Godard (seen here above, in his hat) occupied a place in cinema that few filmmakers could ever hope to approach. His work challenged convention, disrupted expectations and questioned the very language of filmmaking. He was not simply making films; he was continually asking what cinema could be, what it should be, and how it might evolve.

I had the opportunity to interview him in Paris about one of his later films, Goodbye to Language, and his exploration of 3D using Canon cameras.

The experience was fascinating, not least because Godard was never someone who seemed particularly interested in making things easy for an interviewer. His thinking was restless, his approach unconventional, and his relationship with cinema far more complex than a straightforward conversation about cameras or technology might suggest.

Yet that was precisely what made the encounter so memorable. Here was a man who had spent decades questioning the accepted rules of his medium, still experimenting, still challenging the audience, still looking for new ways to express ideas through moving images.

For someone whose working life has involved photography, journalism and visual communication, there was something deeply inspiring about that refusal to stand still. Technology was not an end in itself. It was another means of exploring an idea, another way to push at the boundaries of what could be achieved.

Looking back, I wonder whether I fully appreciated the significance of that meeting at the time. Of course, I knew who Godard was. I understood his importance to cinema. But when you are working, chasing a deadline, preparing questions and trying to get the material you need, it is easy to become absorbed in the practicalities of the moment.

You do the interview. You write the story. You move on to the next assignment. Only later do you realise that an ordinary working day was anything but ordinary.

Godard died in September 2022. His passing marked the loss of one of the great experimental minds of cinema, but for me it also brought back the memory of that encounter in Paris. I was reminded that, for all the mythology surrounding great artists, there is a moment when they become real to you. They are no longer just a name attached to extraordinary work. They are a person you sat opposite, listened to and asked questions of.

I am grateful I had that opportunity. And I regret, as I suspect many journalists do, that I cannot return to that conversation with the experience and perspective I have now. What else might I have asked? What might I have understood differently? Those questions are unanswerable. Perhaps that is part of the melancholy.

Sebastião Salgado: A vision of the world that demanded to be seen

If Godard represented the restless possibilities of cinema, Sebastião Salgado represented photography at its most monumental, compassionate and morally ambitious.

I visited Salgado in his studio in Paris to talk about Genesis and his use of Canon cameras. His mammoth opus was an undertaking of almost unimaginable scale, taking him across continents in search of landscapes, wildlife and communities living in ways that remained deeply connected to the Earth. I spent an entire afternoon with him, and I remember the experience with a sense of awe.

There are people whose presence seems to expand the space around them. Salgado was one of those people. His vision was immense, but it was also rooted in a profound sense of responsibility. His photographs were not simply beautiful objects. They asked us to look again at a world we too often take for granted, and to consider what might be lost if we fail to protect it.

His black-and-white imagery possessed a physical weight. Light, texture, scale and human expression seemed to become something almost tangible. Yet the technical brilliance was only part of the story. Behind the images lay years of commitment, extraordinary patience and a willingness to place himself in environments that most of us will never experience.

Sitting with him that afternoon, I found myself thinking about the relationship between ambition and purpose. Photography can be many things: a profession, a means of earning a living, a way of documenting events, an expression of personal identity. But Salgado demonstrated what can happen when the medium becomes a lifelong mission. His work reminded us that photography has the power to change the way we understand our place in the world.

I was in awe of the man and his vision, and I suspect I was also a little overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what he had achieved. Here was someone who had travelled so extensively, witnessed so much and translated those experiences into a body of work that reached far beyond the photographic community.

Salgado died in May 2025. The news brought me back to that afternoon in Paris and to the privilege of having heard him speak about Genesis in person.

There is a peculiar feeling when someone whose work you admire dies. Their photographs remain, their books sit on shelves, and their ideas continue to circulate. In one sense, they are still present. You can return to their work whenever you want. But the possibility of encountering them again has disappeared.

I will never sit in that studio for another afternoon. I cannot ask him what he thought about the changing relationship between humanity and nature, or how his understanding of the world evolved after completing such an extraordinary project. What remains is the memory, and the work. Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps it has to be.

Jean-François Leroy: The man who brought the world to Perpignan

My feelings about Jean-François Leroy (above) are different again. Leroy, the founder and director of Visa pour l’Image, was not simply someone I admired from a distance or met for a single assignment. I knew him for more than 15 years, and I attended the festival and its exhibitions every year from 2012 onwards.

Visa pour l’Image became part of the rhythm of my professional life. Each visit to Perpignan offered the chance to reconnect with familiar faces, discover new work, encounter stories from across the globe and spend time among people who shared an enduring belief in the power and importance of photojournalism. Leroy was central to that world.

He understood that photography was not merely about producing compelling pictures. It was about bearing witness. It was about making the invisible visible, confronting uncomfortable truths and giving audiences access to lives and experiences they might otherwise never encounter.

Through Visa pour l’Image, he created a place where those stories could be seen, discussed and debated. The festival became an essential meeting point for photographers, editors, picture desks, journalists and anyone who believed that visual journalism mattered.

For me, its importance was both professional and personal. Over the years, Perpignan became a kind of annual gathering point, a place where the work of photographers I admired could be experienced at scale, away from the distractions of everyday life. It was somewhere to think about the industry, to reflect on the stories being told and to remember why I had chosen this particular path.

And Leroy was part of that experience. His passion, determination and commitment helped create something that was much bigger than any one person, even though his personality and vision were so closely associated with it.

When you know someone over many years, their passing brings a different sort of reflection. It is not just about the loss of an individual. It is about the end of a familiar presence in a world that has become part of your own story.

I find myself thinking about all those visits to Perpignan, the exhibitions, the conversations and the sense of anticipation that came with each new edition. I think about the many photographers whose work found an audience through the festival, and the importance of having someone prepared to champion difficult, challenging and sometimes uncomfortable stories. There is gratitude in those memories, but also regret.

I wish I had expressed my admiration more often. I wish there had been more time for conversations that went beyond the immediate business of the festival. And I wish I could return to Perpignan and know that Leroy was still there, still at the centre of the extraordinary world he helped build.

Of course, Visa pour l’Image will continue to exist beyond its founder. That is part of his legacy. But institutions, like photographs, carry the traces of the people who shaped them. For those of us who returned year after year, his absence will inevitably change the experience.

The privilege of having been there

Three men. Three extraordinary legacies. Three very different relationships with my own life and career. I did not know any of them in the way their closest friends and families did. It would be wrong to pretend otherwise. But admiration does not require intimacy, and the influence of an artist can be deeply personal even when the relationship itself is limited.

As photographers and journalists, we spend much of our lives looking outward. We look for stories, for pictures, for moments that reveal something about the human condition. We travel, interview, observe and document. We meet people who leave an impression on us, sometimes without fully understanding why until years later.

Occasionally, we are fortunate enough to meet the people whose work helped inspire us in the first place. That is a privilege I have never taken entirely for granted, although I am not sure I have always appreciated it as much as I should.

There is a particular regret in recognising the significance of a moment only after it has passed. We imagine there will be another opportunity, another conversation, another chance to ask the question we forgot to ask. We assume that the people who have always been there, whose work has accompanied us for years, will continue to be there. But then, they are gone.

Perhaps this is why the deaths of Godard, Salgado and Leroy have affected me so deeply. Their passing has reminded me not only of what the world has lost, but of how fortunate I have been to occupy a small corner of their stories.

I was there in Paris, asking Godard about cinema and 3D. I was there in Salgado’s studio, listening to him talk about a project that sought to capture the extraordinary beauty and fragility of our planet. And I was there in Perpignan, year after year, sharing in the world that Jean-François Leroy created for photojournalism. Those experiences are part of my own history now. No death can take them away.

I feel melancholy when I think about them. I feel regret for the things left unsaid and the questions left unasked. I feel admiration for what they achieved and the courage it took to pursue their visions. Above all, I feel gratitude. Gratitude that my work as a photographer and journalist opened doors I might otherwise never have walked through. Gratitude that I was able to meet people whose work had helped shape my understanding of the world. Gratitude that, for a few hours or across many years, our paths crossed.

Perhaps growing older means becoming increasingly aware of these intersections. You begin to understand that a career is not simply a collection of assignments, publications and achievements. It is also a collection of encounters, memories and moments that acquire a deeper meaning with time.

And perhaps the best way to honour the people who inspired us is to keep looking, keep asking questions and keep telling stories. To carry something of their curiosity, their conviction and their commitment into whatever we do next.

I cannot speak to Godard again, sit with Salgado in his studio or walk into another Visa pour l’Image knowing Leroy is there. But I can return to their work. I can remember those encounters. And I can continue to do the thing that brought me into their orbit in the first place: to look at the world with curiosity, to try to understand it, and to find ways of sharing what I see.

For that, I will always be grateful.