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About the PhotographerRaymond Depardon is a French photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker. He has made eighteen feature-length films and published forty-seven books. As a photojournalist, he co-founded the Gamma agency in 1966, and photographed in conflict zones in Algeria, Vietnam, Biafra, and Chad. In 1978, he joined Magnum Photos. In 1991, Depardon received the Grand Prix National de la Photographie. In 1995 his film Délits Flagrants, on the French justice system, received a César Award for best documentary. His book Rural was published in 2020 by the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. |
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Truth in Photography: How did you start taking photos? What urged you to start?
Raymond Depardon: At the beginning, I didn't think that I would become a photographer or a filmmaker. I was the second child in a family of farmers from the Saône Valley. There were things at stake because the farm's operation needed to be continued. My brother left to study, and he did very well, and I was the last chance for continuing the farm. For a long time, I felt guilty for leaving my parents, I thought I had been cowardly, thinking only of myself, but my parents knew very well, from the start, that I wouldn't continue with the farm because I wasn't talented for that sort of work. I was a dreamer.
They regretted that they were unable to help me. It was their whole life. But fortunately a miracle occurred. My brother finally came back and took over the farm. I wasn't a great student. I left for Paris when I was sixteen, very young. But until I was sixteen, my father didn't like seeing my hanging around the farm doing nothing. He found me a job as an apprentice with a photographer of the city of Villefranche. I started to take pictures. That was all I thought about and all I was interested in. Why do I take pictures? I think, honestly, I don't know how I would live if I didn't take pictures. |
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TiP: How do you use a camera or movie camera to take your place in the world? To belong to what is happening around you?
Depardon: I was for a long time, and I am still very shy. But my cameras protected me. Looking at my photos from not too long ago, when I joined Magnum, I had practically more photos of women taken from behind than in front! In some ways, cinema is easier. The movie camera protects you very well. I think that it's a better shield.
Depardon: I was for a long time, and I am still very shy. But my cameras protected me. Looking at my photos from not too long ago, when I joined Magnum, I had practically more photos of women taken from behind than in front! In some ways, cinema is easier. The movie camera protects you very well. I think that it's a better shield.
TiP: In your experience, do you think there is more “truth” in documentary film or in photography?
Depardon: Perhaps it is not the same truth. I think I was saved in cinema by my meeting with Claudine [Nougaret, Depardon’s wife, one of French cinema’s greatest sound engineers] because I share with images and sound and words. The soundtrack. I understood that this cinema, this spoken language was very important. If you are a photographer and you make films, and it's to do the same thing as with photography, then there is not a point to it. I have great respect for very visual cinema such as Paul Strand, Eisenstein, etc. Cinema is really something which pushes me to listen to others, to come towards other people, to be more sociable. It's more political, and less poetic.
TiP: There is truth in poetry, too. Somewhere between the representation of reality and the poetry of representation..
Depardon: When I joined Magnum in 1978, and I went to rallies and didn't understand what was being said, it was still an important presence. I realized that, although I was shy and somewhat handicapped by not speaking English, I had a quality that was primordial. When I was very young, 18, I had been sent to Algeria, Africa. Although I was shy, I realized that I was also very brave to go all alone with a car, a guide, among the rebels, etc. I took photos in the street of demonstrations. I wasn't afraid and I realized that a New York or a Parisian might find it unthinkable. I found this truth within myself.
Depardon: Perhaps it is not the same truth. I think I was saved in cinema by my meeting with Claudine [Nougaret, Depardon’s wife, one of French cinema’s greatest sound engineers] because I share with images and sound and words. The soundtrack. I understood that this cinema, this spoken language was very important. If you are a photographer and you make films, and it's to do the same thing as with photography, then there is not a point to it. I have great respect for very visual cinema such as Paul Strand, Eisenstein, etc. Cinema is really something which pushes me to listen to others, to come towards other people, to be more sociable. It's more political, and less poetic.
TiP: There is truth in poetry, too. Somewhere between the representation of reality and the poetry of representation..
Depardon: When I joined Magnum in 1978, and I went to rallies and didn't understand what was being said, it was still an important presence. I realized that, although I was shy and somewhat handicapped by not speaking English, I had a quality that was primordial. When I was very young, 18, I had been sent to Algeria, Africa. Although I was shy, I realized that I was also very brave to go all alone with a car, a guide, among the rebels, etc. I took photos in the street of demonstrations. I wasn't afraid and I realized that a New York or a Parisian might find it unthinkable. I found this truth within myself.
TiP: You were in Algeria recently. Can you tell us a little bit about your project with Kamel Daoud?
Depardon: A very important anniversary is coming up for France, sixty years of Algerian independence. I have photos from just before independence, that very difficult period. It occurred to me that rather than asking a French writer to write about my photos, I could ask an Algerian writer. Claudine loved Daoud’s work, that is connected to Albert Camus’s. We met, we got along, he asked me to come take photos and we will have an exhibition in October at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. The title of the exhibition is quite original: “His eye in my hand.”
I think that there is a meeting between a writer and a photographer because, for me, my generation, we have all been marked by the great meetings between writers and photographers. It was an interesting adventure for me.
TiP: A central issue in your work is America. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience when you photograph America, the Americans, your relationship in general with the culture, and why it is important for you?
Depardon: Perhaps I felt like I owed a debt to America. The city that I come from makes a lot of textiles. My godmother worked for a French brand called Lafont. In the 1950s, Levi’s from Texas invited people from Lafont to come to their factories. My godmother brought me back a denim jacket, and I wore it to school. The principal said, “You cannot come here dressed like that!” My godmother also brought me back a map of the kind you find in drugstores, with little drawings, with all of the states and oil wells. I put it in my bedroom and always dreamed about it.
In 1960 I was there for the independence of the Ivory Coast and Robert Kennedy was there. During a break, I went up to him and started speaking to him in French. He was eating an orange and gave me half of it. That would be unthinkable in France. I told him that I wanted to study journalism and photography in the United States, and he said, “Oh yes, there is a school in Missouri.” I then received a letter from him with the information about the school - I know that James Nachtwey graduated from there. [Nachtwey attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.]
The United States played a very important role at very different times for me. Firstly, because some photographers focused on rural themes while that wasn't well seen in France to take pictures of farmers. In the cinema, there was the school of Frederick Wiseman [American documentarian and filmmaker], and this was an alternative for me which was important for my filmmaking. When I read that Walker Evans came to Paris in 1924, and that he was very influenced by Gustave Flaubert [French novelist] and Charles Baudelaire [French poet], and then Eugène Atget [French pioneer of documentary photography], I no longer had any complex with regard to this exchange between the United States and France; we often compare our cultures and our ways of doing things, constantly, throughout the history of photography and cinema.
Depardon: A very important anniversary is coming up for France, sixty years of Algerian independence. I have photos from just before independence, that very difficult period. It occurred to me that rather than asking a French writer to write about my photos, I could ask an Algerian writer. Claudine loved Daoud’s work, that is connected to Albert Camus’s. We met, we got along, he asked me to come take photos and we will have an exhibition in October at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. The title of the exhibition is quite original: “His eye in my hand.”
I think that there is a meeting between a writer and a photographer because, for me, my generation, we have all been marked by the great meetings between writers and photographers. It was an interesting adventure for me.
TiP: A central issue in your work is America. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience when you photograph America, the Americans, your relationship in general with the culture, and why it is important for you?
Depardon: Perhaps I felt like I owed a debt to America. The city that I come from makes a lot of textiles. My godmother worked for a French brand called Lafont. In the 1950s, Levi’s from Texas invited people from Lafont to come to their factories. My godmother brought me back a denim jacket, and I wore it to school. The principal said, “You cannot come here dressed like that!” My godmother also brought me back a map of the kind you find in drugstores, with little drawings, with all of the states and oil wells. I put it in my bedroom and always dreamed about it.
In 1960 I was there for the independence of the Ivory Coast and Robert Kennedy was there. During a break, I went up to him and started speaking to him in French. He was eating an orange and gave me half of it. That would be unthinkable in France. I told him that I wanted to study journalism and photography in the United States, and he said, “Oh yes, there is a school in Missouri.” I then received a letter from him with the information about the school - I know that James Nachtwey graduated from there. [Nachtwey attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.]
The United States played a very important role at very different times for me. Firstly, because some photographers focused on rural themes while that wasn't well seen in France to take pictures of farmers. In the cinema, there was the school of Frederick Wiseman [American documentarian and filmmaker], and this was an alternative for me which was important for my filmmaking. When I read that Walker Evans came to Paris in 1924, and that he was very influenced by Gustave Flaubert [French novelist] and Charles Baudelaire [French poet], and then Eugène Atget [French pioneer of documentary photography], I no longer had any complex with regard to this exchange between the United States and France; we often compare our cultures and our ways of doing things, constantly, throughout the history of photography and cinema.
TiP: What attracts you to the United States? What did you see, that you think Americans wouldn't see? With your eyes of a Frenchman, the place you come from, your life path?
Depardon: Something very old and very modern. For example, farmers' cabins, like those of Steinbeck. My parents had farm workers, there is something I like about them. The agriculture from the beginning of the century. There is something that has remained very raw. But at the same time much more modern than us, with the cars, the pick-up trucks. I feel very good in the US, although I am like an autistic person, because I don't speak the language. But I remember a journey 30 years ago with Claudine, and our son who was very young. He was always thirsty. We would go to farms, we were in Alabama, and say, “Our son is thirsty.” And the people would give us water and I would look around their houses: the windows, the farms like the farms of Walker Evans…
I called my last book Rural. It is a word that exists in French, of course, but there is no “Rural” section in French newspapers, although all American newspapers have a “Rural” section... |
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TiP: How do you see the reality in the field, the people, and the land, in America?
Depardon: I find that there is a big difference. I spoke a great deal with Wiseman. There is the US Constitution, of course. He said that article two of the Constitution provides that institutions be transparent. That is great for documentary filmmakers. It allows us to make films about juvenile courts, etc. But it is also the philosophy of people like, for example, John Szarkowski, the former director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He said that the street, the people in the street, the whole public space reveals a lot and is very political. “Show me your street, I'll tell you who you are.” The French are not at that stage yet. They don't yet have this philosophy. I like the public space as a workplace for photographers, without end, allowing an incredibly rich work.
Depardon: I find that there is a big difference. I spoke a great deal with Wiseman. There is the US Constitution, of course. He said that article two of the Constitution provides that institutions be transparent. That is great for documentary filmmakers. It allows us to make films about juvenile courts, etc. But it is also the philosophy of people like, for example, John Szarkowski, the former director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He said that the street, the people in the street, the whole public space reveals a lot and is very political. “Show me your street, I'll tell you who you are.” The French are not at that stage yet. They don't yet have this philosophy. I like the public space as a workplace for photographers, without end, allowing an incredibly rich work.
TiP: For photos that don't have people in them, or few people, in which the human being is not central, your photos of America, the desert in particular, how did you manage to take photos which reveal the country, and also politics, without human intervention?
Depardon: Perhaps that's the difference compared with old Europe. People always ask me: What is your point of view? Your commitment? What do you mean? What is your mission? Your message? I have the impression sometimes that by taking pictures of landscapes or displays, still lives, that the American school taught me, I have the impression that a message is not needed. The message is in the photograph, it is embedded. You don't need to be an activist, or affiliated with a party. And maybe that's the big difference. Things are changing, between the old continent and the United States. I have the impression that when I photograph a landscape, it is also a political photo, because I let people see all kinds of information which is part of sociology, or anthropology. I have the impression that I put myself into it, to a large extent.
Depardon: Perhaps that's the difference compared with old Europe. People always ask me: What is your point of view? Your commitment? What do you mean? What is your mission? Your message? I have the impression sometimes that by taking pictures of landscapes or displays, still lives, that the American school taught me, I have the impression that a message is not needed. The message is in the photograph, it is embedded. You don't need to be an activist, or affiliated with a party. And maybe that's the big difference. Things are changing, between the old continent and the United States. I have the impression that when I photograph a landscape, it is also a political photo, because I let people see all kinds of information which is part of sociology, or anthropology. I have the impression that I put myself into it, to a large extent.
TiP: Perhaps this is why, in part, you are considered the quintessential ‘French photographer’ – and that you are so revered in France. Not only because you have built such an outstanding body of work in and about France – a typology of languages, people, and ways of being – including so many less visible sides of France like rural life, psychiatric hospitals, or tribunals – but because of the very way you work, at once traditional and contemporary.
Depardon: I think that my peers, that is to say photographers of the past, were in advance and behind. They gave a lot of themselves. Some photographers from the beginning of the century were very modern. Atget and others photographed thought in a very modern way. And there is the humanistic side. They were a bit swallowed up by and then enclosed in humanism. So people are used to thinking that a photograph must always show a human face. I think it's a question of culture. For example, when I go to Africa for landscape photos, people there think that it's a waste of film. Europeans feel this a lot, and classic photojournalism and in classic humanism that we see on TV today. We see landscapes in the films of the Coen brothers. It is a tradition to make landscapes. It is crazy, because French painters are also important. They painted landscapes. I only started to take landscape photos about twenty years ago. I'm still not good at it. I've got a long way to go.
Depardon: I think that my peers, that is to say photographers of the past, were in advance and behind. They gave a lot of themselves. Some photographers from the beginning of the century were very modern. Atget and others photographed thought in a very modern way. And there is the humanistic side. They were a bit swallowed up by and then enclosed in humanism. So people are used to thinking that a photograph must always show a human face. I think it's a question of culture. For example, when I go to Africa for landscape photos, people there think that it's a waste of film. Europeans feel this a lot, and classic photojournalism and in classic humanism that we see on TV today. We see landscapes in the films of the Coen brothers. It is a tradition to make landscapes. It is crazy, because French painters are also important. They painted landscapes. I only started to take landscape photos about twenty years ago. I'm still not good at it. I've got a long way to go.
TiP: The subject that you have continually examined is confinement: prisons, psychiatric hospitals, etc. We have been talking about confinement for a year now, with Covid, but it has for so many years been the subject of your work. Can you tell us why you have this need to take photos and to make films on the subject of confinement - and, on its other side –the theme of freedom, and your love for the nomad, and the desert?
Depardon: It's rather paradoxical and even opposite. I had a very sweet and happy childhood on a farm. I ran around the barns. It was great. But then later, I was 30 years old, as a press photographer, I was once thrown in prison in Tchad, forbidden to take photos for months. I was very scared. When I came back from this assignment, during which I had spent eight months in the desert, I was afraid of walls, and of doors. It was a life changing trauma.
TiP: You talk about your love of nomadic people, in a way it seems like you are identifying with them.
Depardon: Yes. Some people say that I'm always trying to recreate my Ferme du Garet [where Depardon grew up, one of his iconic bodies of work]. Like I chase after this farm. It's strange, because nomads don't have a farm, they don't have a house. When I was leaving for Africa, my father, the last time I saw him, asked me why I went to Africa, always hanging around with the nomads. I was a very awkward young man. I stuttered. But I knew that he was part of the same world. My father raised farm animals. There isn't such a big difference between a camel and a cow. The same anxieties, the same people.
TiP: In your series Correspondance new yorkaise, the seminal project you made in New York in the summer of 1981 with French newspaper Libération, you combined images with words. Sometimes, the words seemed to have nothing to do with the images they were related to. To explain this departure, you evoke Roland Barthes’ notions of “relay-text” as opposed to “anchor text” – or how to depart from an image to create a personal narrative. Some of your photographs became a prompt for diaristic entries, very personal and poetic postcards.
Depardon: Yes, I sent a photo every day, this was in July 1981. It was a big deal for me because I came just behind the Marguerite Duras [famous French author] section. The journalists of Libération told me: write texts under your photos. Fortunately, the city of New York has incredible strength, and I forgot about Duras.
I took a photo of Park Avenue from the women's bathroom of Geo magazine. It was nothing extraordinary, just a normal photo in which you see the bathroom, and Park Avenue behind it. I left and went to drink a coffee in a coffee shop. I don't know why, but I thought about my parents who were still alive at the time and who were harvesting wheat on their farm. And I started feeling guilty, because I knew that they needed help. And hence this New York moment marked the beginning of my ongoing work on rural France.
Depardon: It's rather paradoxical and even opposite. I had a very sweet and happy childhood on a farm. I ran around the barns. It was great. But then later, I was 30 years old, as a press photographer, I was once thrown in prison in Tchad, forbidden to take photos for months. I was very scared. When I came back from this assignment, during which I had spent eight months in the desert, I was afraid of walls, and of doors. It was a life changing trauma.
TiP: You talk about your love of nomadic people, in a way it seems like you are identifying with them.
Depardon: Yes. Some people say that I'm always trying to recreate my Ferme du Garet [where Depardon grew up, one of his iconic bodies of work]. Like I chase after this farm. It's strange, because nomads don't have a farm, they don't have a house. When I was leaving for Africa, my father, the last time I saw him, asked me why I went to Africa, always hanging around with the nomads. I was a very awkward young man. I stuttered. But I knew that he was part of the same world. My father raised farm animals. There isn't such a big difference between a camel and a cow. The same anxieties, the same people.
TiP: In your series Correspondance new yorkaise, the seminal project you made in New York in the summer of 1981 with French newspaper Libération, you combined images with words. Sometimes, the words seemed to have nothing to do with the images they were related to. To explain this departure, you evoke Roland Barthes’ notions of “relay-text” as opposed to “anchor text” – or how to depart from an image to create a personal narrative. Some of your photographs became a prompt for diaristic entries, very personal and poetic postcards.
Depardon: Yes, I sent a photo every day, this was in July 1981. It was a big deal for me because I came just behind the Marguerite Duras [famous French author] section. The journalists of Libération told me: write texts under your photos. Fortunately, the city of New York has incredible strength, and I forgot about Duras.
I took a photo of Park Avenue from the women's bathroom of Geo magazine. It was nothing extraordinary, just a normal photo in which you see the bathroom, and Park Avenue behind it. I left and went to drink a coffee in a coffee shop. I don't know why, but I thought about my parents who were still alive at the time and who were harvesting wheat on their farm. And I started feeling guilty, because I knew that they needed help. And hence this New York moment marked the beginning of my ongoing work on rural France.
Delve deeper
Raymond Depardon's exhibition Films, photos et voyages opened in September 2021 at the Institut Lumière in Lyon.
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