Raymond Depardon (b. 6 July 1942, Villefranche-sur-Saône, France) is a French photographer, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker.
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Depardon is for the most part a self-taught photographer, as he began taking pictures on his family's farm when he was 12. He apprenticed with a photographer-optician in Villefranche-sur-Saône before he moved to Paris in 1958.[1] He began his career as a photojournalist in the early 1960s. He travelled to conflict zones including Algeria, Vietnam, Biafra and Chad. In 1966, Depardon co-founded the photojournalism agency Gamma, and he became its director in 1974. In 1973 he became Gamma’s director. From 1975 to 1977 Depardon traveled in Chad and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1977. The next year he left Gamma to become a Magnum associate, then a full member in 1979. In the 1990s, Depardon went back to his parents’ farm to photograph rural landscapes in color, and then in 1996 published a black-and-white road journal, In Africa.[2]
Depardon is also the author of several documentary shorts and feature films. His approach as a director is influenced by cinéma vérité and direct cinema. In 1969 he made his first film (about Jan Pallach) and he has directed 16 films since then. In 1979 he received a George Sadoul Prize for his film Numéro Zéro. In 1984 Depardon made his first fiction film, Empty Quarters. Other notable examples include 1974, une partie de campagne, on the 1974 presidential campaign of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Reporters (1981) and New York, N.Y. (1986), both winners of the César Award for best short documentary, La captive du désert (1990), nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival[3] and Délits flagrants (1994) which won awards for best feature documentary at the César Awards, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Joris Ivens award) and the Vancouver International Film Festival.
At the 2000 Kraków Film Festival, Depardon received the Dragon of Dragons, a lifetime achievement award.