Photographer of the Week: Raymond Depardon

Photographer and filmmaker with a world-wide reputation, Raymond Depardon (1942- ) started to take pictures in his family farm in the French country side. He covered several wars around the world such as the Algeria war, the Vietnam war, the Lebanon civil war and Afghanistan after the USSR’s intervention.

Beirut, Lebanon, civil war- 1978. A Christian falangist

 

 

Depardon learned the profession on the field. At the age of 16 he moved to Paris and became Gilles Foucherand’s assistant. In the 60s he then worked for the Dalmas agency where he shot pictures of celebrities and small news items.

 

FROLINAT fighter (National Liberation Front of Chad), 1979

 

 

His coverage of a survival experiment in Sahara attracted attention and boosted his career. His reports made the front page of the well-known French magazine attaching a huge importance to pictures Paris Match. Since 1960, Raymond Depardon has photographed Africa time and time again. “Infinite places and times! A whole lifetime would not be enough to claim to know Africa,” says Raymond Depardon. “I wanted to suffocate standing before vast Africa, to find myself overcome, on the side of the road where our car would break down, for days, to remain silent and to listen.”

In 1967, he founded the famous Gamma agency. Gamma became a model for other agencies because of its particular way of functioning, which allow a lot of freedom to the photographer. Each reporter can select his reports, finance them and get the benefits of it. In 1979 he left Gamma and joined the Magnum cooperative.

 

"Le garet" farm

His style is very direct, documentary, spare. From the late 1970s on, little by little he goes away from pure information and adopted a more personal and subjective approach. He is not the paparazzo he used to be. He will keep on shooting pictures but cinema will become his main activity.

The photographer's parents

His work is very melancholic and sensitive. His last documentary refers to his own history. Son of a farmer, he released La vie moderne (Modern Life) in 2008, a documentary about farmers living in the mountains that took him ten years. Rural life is one of the topic that remained close to depardon’s heart.

 

Rhone Department, "le Garet" farm, 1991

~ by delhidecidela on August 24, 2009.