Raymond Depardon Book order

Depardon grasps the light of Scotland as never before and sublimes the end of a working world

“At the age of 22 I was sent to Saigon to cover the war as a photojournalist. I was too late for Indochina, and too early for Vietnam. Muggers robbed me on my arrival, and I lived in a small hotel by the river. I drove towards the front in an old Citroën. I think I was happy. I returned some years later. It was for another war, and the famous reporters had left. The streets were full of GIs and their girlfriends, of blind bomb victims and so many children returning to school. It was the end of an epoch, people would hand flowers to the soldiers. Everybody wanted to leave, and it was cheap to stay at luxury hotels. To forget my heartache, I got drunk and walked the streets all day. The city was very generous and welcomed me with open arms, so I lost sense of time. I stayed for months in this city that no longer exists. The last time I went there I was at peace with things, and at the War Remnants Museum I visited my friends who had died on the battlefield. Today, the city has another name and has fully entered globalization.” Raymond Depardon

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.

Acclaimed French photographer, filmmaker and journalist Raymond Depardon arrived in New York in the winter of 1980. He came to visit a friend who had just taken a job in the city, and to kill time he strolled around the streets with his Leica. As a self-imposed constraint, and to encourage serendipitous results, he decided to take pictures without ever using the camera's viewfinder. Working incognito throughout the nooks and crannies of New York City, Depardon amassed two or three rolls a day--but when the time came to assess the results, he was thoroughly disappointed. He never mentioned the experiment to anybody and has only now decided to unveil these "blind" pictures to his public. Reexamining the work some 27 years "after the photographs were taken, Depardon was surprised to discover that most of his subjects were aware that they were being photographed, and that consequently the images contain more artifice than he had expected. His subjects project an affect of indifference in their knowing glances towards the camera lens, thereby immortalizing the very spirit and charm of 1980s New York, a period for which there is increasing fondness and nostalgia today. With an essay by the great philosopher Paul Virilio, this monograph opens up an exciting and hitherto lost chapter in Depardon's storied career.