Böcker av Raymond Depardon

Communes is a photographic essay by Raymond Depardon exploring the villages of France¿s Mediterranean inland region. Its 80 black-and-white photographs were taken by Depardon in the summer of 2020, after France¿s first lockdown, and cover the departments of Aveyron, Lozère, Gard and Hérault. These villages are timeless havens of peace, where tranquility and cool prevail. Witnesses to history, they were threatened by the `Nant concession¿, a shale gas extraction project, but the inhabitants protested and the project was abandoned in 2015. The villages, with their cobbled streets, old houses with jagged facades and rustic construction, are once again thriving. The photographs are accompanied by a text by Salomé Berlioux, president of the association Chemins d¿Avenirs, an association that accompanies and promotes thousands of young people from isolated areas. Berlioux is also the author of Les Invisibles de la République. Comment sauver la jeunesse de la France périphérique? (Robert Laffont, 2019) and Nos campagnes suspendes. La France périphérique face à la crise (Editions de l'Observatoire, 2020).

Filmmaker, photographer and international journalist, Raymond Depardon holds a unique place in the field of the contemporary image. In 1967, he co-founded the Gamma Agency, and in 1978, he joined the Magnum Agency for whom he would carry out reports all over the world up until the beginning of the 1980s. While continuing to practise photography on a daily basis, he later turned his attention to documentary film, making use of the direct cinema genre. Raymond Depardon puts the fixed and moving image at the service of a simple and singular narrative. From his first pictures taken in the early 1960s to his latest trips to Africa and South America, as well as voyages to Vietnam, Beirut and Glasgow, Raymond Depardon¿s work is characterized by its fundamentally human approach. In 2010, he presented the exhibition ¿La France de Raymond Depardon¿ at the BnF Fran¿s-Mitterrand in Paris and, in 2013, the exhibition ¿Un moment si doux¿, at the Grand Palais in Paris, bringing together fifty years of his color photography. With his wife Claudine Nougaret, Raymond Depardon has produced numerous films: Urgences (1988), La Captive du d¿rt (1990), D¿ts flagrants (1994), Paris (1998), 10e chambre, instants d¿audiences (2004), La Vie Moderne (2008), Journal de France (2012), and Les Habitants (2016).

Explores peoples attachment to their countries, and the planets role in forming ones identity, as well as the paths and consequences of human migrations. This book also discusses subjects ranging from Tuvaluans forced to leave their Pacific island, to a human cannonball who catapults himself over the US-Mexico border.