Description

In the summer of 1981, Raymond Depardon sent a photo and a caption from New York to the French newspaper Libération, once a day for a month. This New York correspondence marked, with his out-of-field images and his offbeat angles, a turning point in his photographic journey. The next year Raymond Depardon returned to America and traveled west, from New Mexico to California via Colorado and Nevada. Pictured here, Monument Valley.

The photographer is filled with doubt. Nothing will soothe him

Raymond Depardon
© Raymond Depardon | Magnum Photos

Raymond Depardon, born in France in 1942, began taking photographs on his family farm in Garet at the age of 12. Apprenticed to a photographer-optician in Villefranche-sur-Saône, he left for Paris in 1958.

He joined the Dalmas agency in Paris in 1960 as a reporter, and in 1966 he co-founded the Gamma agency, reporting from all over the world. From 1974 to 1977, as a photographer and filmmaker, he covered the kidnap of a French ethnologist, François Claustre, in northern Chad.

Alongside his photographic career, he began to make documentary films: 1974, Une Partie de Campagne and San Clemente. He has since made eighteen feature-length films and published forty-seven books.

Depardon joined Magnum in 1978. He is based in Paris.

© Raymond Depardon | Magnum Photos

Get Magnum news and updates directly to your inbox

Stay in touch
Learn about online and offline exhibitions, photography fairs, gallery events, plus fine print news and activities, on a monthly basis.
Get fortnightly tips and advice articles, find out about the latest workshops, free online events and on-demand courses.
Stay up to date every Thursday with Magnum photographers’ activities, new work, stories published on the Magnum website, and the latest offerings from our shop.