Description

In 1981, Raymond Depardon’s La Correspondance New-Yorkaise was published in the Libération newspaper in France. Composed of humorous, observational, photographic notes—and no topical news—the newspaper dedicated a full page to this correspondence every day for a month. It was a pivotal moment both in French photography and in Depardon’s career. La Correspondance New-Yorkaise marked a turn toward the “new journalism” of the era, which fed on daily life and featured first-person, subjective writing.

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

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