A white battered van stops in the windswept car park of a coastal French town. A man dressed in black gets out and struggles with a tripod supporting a large old camera, puts it in place, points it towards a grey green sea, fiddles a bit with the apparatus, waves a large light meter around, fiddles some more, ducks behind a small red curtain, slides in a film plate to the back of the huge camera. “One second exposure, at F 32” he says, before taking a long slow breath. “Be careful not to move…”
Hardly the “decisive moment”, you might think, of French photo reportage pioneered by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson. So the surprise is that the man in the white van is Raymond Depardon, one of France’s best-known living photojournalists and documentary filmmakers.
The Magnum agency photographer has turned his slow shutter on the “the other France”, the small towns and villages and unremarkable rural areas that have become his focus for ten years, 70,000 kms, and a trail of startled motorists who mistook his large old Leica and tripod for a speed trap.
The results are now being exhibited at Bogota’s Museum of Art of the Banco de La República.
The large colour prints are a window into a France that Depardon calls ‘mundane´ and ´banal’, but for the rest of us somehow still manages to be chic. Baskets of purple flowers grace the sills of a lonely house wedged between a main road and a rolling green field. An old Citroen CV broods beneath the battered shutters of an antique house. Even paint-peeling shop fronts ooze charm like brie from a baguette.
Much of the enchantement comes from the remarkable detail picked up by the 20x 25cm plate film shot on a large-format camera, and printed up large it invites the eye into the text of posters stuck on grimy walls, the bar menu stuck on the wall, magazine covers at the tabac, prices of dry sausage in the charcuterie, all wrapped up in what Deperadon calls ’the everyday’. Akind of abstract French version of Where’s Wally.
Occasionally the drama of nature takes over and Depardon makes no attempt to block it out, such as the Chamonix glaciers looming over Haute Savoie, though the target of his lens appears to be an internet café. But perhaps most visible by their absence are people. The few human inhabitants of his vistas are distant or backs turned. Only one photo shows a recognisable face, a tyre mechanic in blackened overalls.
Depardon explains this by his own shyness, “being close to people is not my style,” he says, a strange remark from someone once thrust into the crowds at world events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or Nixon on the campaign trail. Another clue is in the exhibition notes: ´To photograph landscapes. But what landscapes?’ In fact Depardon is asking us to see urban France as views, rather than clichéd social comment which creeps in once humans are in shot.
This honest approach works for me. I found myself circling the gallery four times, each time stopping and scanning for more details in these large prints which are somehow satisfying. Satisfying that is until the picture of La Maracana, a humble fast food café in Bédarieux, Languedoc: It has my mouth watering. I can almost taste the frites.
So time to head out into the sunshine to find chips at the nearest Burger King. With mayonnaise on the side, of course. I suspect that Depardon would approve.
La France de Raymond Depardon is currently showing at Museo de Arte del Banco de la República,
Calle 11 No4-41, Bogota.
Entrance is free.
