Gérard Rancinan

Gérard Rancinan is a French photographer whose work has appeared in publications such as Sports Illustrated, Time, Life Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine, and Paris Match.

Life and work

Gérard Rancinan started his career as an apprentice in the laboratory of the photo department of the Bordeaux daily newspaper, Sud Ouest. After three years in the dark room he became, at the age of 18, the youngest photojournalist in France, covering news around the region. When he was 21, he was sent to the newspaper’s agency in Pau.

Having been spotted by the newly founded press agency, Sygma, in 1973, Rancinan decided to sign a distribution contract with the firm. Five years later he became a Sygma staff photographer in Paris. He covered current events - earthquakes in Algeria to political upheaval in Poland, war in Lebanon, riots in England; sporting events (Olympic Games, Football World Cups, World Athletics Championships); movie shoots (Ran by Akira Kurosawa, Betty Blue by Jean-Jacques Beineix, The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci); show business, fashion and the cinema.

He left Sygma in 1986 to set up his own agency, before once again becoming independent in 1989.

His portraits of leading personalities (Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II, François Mitterrand, Monica Bellucci, Tiger Woods, Yasser Arafat, Bill Gates, etc.) and his photographic “sagas” describing major societal developments have been published on the front pages of magazines Paris Match, Life Magazine, Stern, The Sunday Times Magazine. Since 1984, Rancinan has also worked on a regular basis with Sports Illustrated. In his projects, he collaborates with writers, journalists, thinkers, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers (Caroline Gaudriault, Virginie Luc, Paul Virilio, Francis Fukuyama etc.).

In the 1990s, Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr produced Rancinan's exhibition Urban Jungle at the Espace Cardin in Paris in 2000. Rancinan’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art: "Portrait of Nathalie", Triennale di Milano: "Portraits of Cardinals", Palais de Tokyo Muséum, Paris: "Metamorphoses") "Trilogy of the Moderns", Triennale di Milano - Contemporary Art Museum, Italie.[1] and is held in private contemporary art collections.

At an auction at the Étude Million at the l'Hôtel Drouot in 2008, his work sold at a pricea comparable with the upper echelons of French contemporary art photographers.[2] His photograph, “Batman Girls”, sold for a record price in London in May 2012 at the auction house, Philip de Pury. The sale of Rancinan’s “The Feast of the Barbarians” by the Étude Pillon in Versailles on May 18, 2014 – achieved the highest price of any living French photographer.[3]

Rancinan photographs his contemporaries and analyses the behaviours and beliefs characterizing modern societies.

Rancinan’s photographs are studied in schools in France within the framework of the National Diploma (DNB) in the History of Art.

On January 7, 2013, Laurent Fabius, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, invited Rancinan to display, in one of the rooms of the Quai d'Orsay his photograph "Batman Boys", promoting the work of contemporary French artists abroad.

Prizes and awards

Most recent solo exhibitions

Films

Books

References

  1. ↑ Triennale di Milano.
  2. ↑ Sud-Ouest (newspaper), Monday, June 2, 2008
  3. ↑ Beaux Arts Magazine July 2014
  4. ↑ Nomination dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres janvier 2013.
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