Island Life: Photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation
Raymond Depardon
Born 1942, Villefranche-sur-Saone, France
‘There were two photographers at Magnum who kept sleeping bags, Joseph Koudelka and me.’
Depardon began taking photos aged 12 on the family farm, then did an apprenticeship with a ‘photographer-optician’ before moving to Paris in 1960 to work as a reporter. He went on to cover conflict zones including Biafra, Chad and Vietnam. He founded Gamma photojournalism agency in 1966, joining Magnum in 1978. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, branching out into fiction film in the 1980s. He’s made 18 feature-length films and published 47 books, won the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1991 and was the artistic director of Rencontres Internationales d’Arles in 2006.
