The photographer presents at the Institute of the Arab World, in Paris, images taken in Algeria in 1961 and 2019, accompanied by the words of the writer.
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Exposure. What Raymond Depardon wanted, it was mostly rendered the photos he took in 1961. We are then in 2018, the anniversary of the independence of the country approach and the photographer returns to his clichés of the time. It is 19 years old in 1961 when he was sent by the Dalmas agency to Algeria, but also in Switzerland, where the future Evian agreements are negotiated that will end the war on March 18, 1962.
Sixty years later, Raymond Depardon wants to find an Algerian look that would put words on his work. On the advice of his wife, director Claudine Nougaret, he contacts the writer Kamel Daoud who accepts. A nice book project is then carried by Barzakh, the Algerian publishing house of the author. It is she who will propose the eponymous exhibition at the Institute of the Arab World: “Raymond Depardon / Kamel Daoud. His eye in my hand. Algeria 1961-2019”.
The result is a dive in the blue of the Mediterranean, color uniting the rooms of the exhibition, where one discovers eighty photographs in black and white Raymond Depardon with, mirrored, of the unprecedented texts of Kamel Daoud who tell the story as much as contemporary Algeria.
The images of the year 1961 are exceptional. While most of the pictures of the time tell the violence of the war or the joy of independence, Raymond Depardon gives to see this period of between-two. Everyone knows that Algeria’s independence is acquired: the referendum on self-determination took place a few months earlier. Fire of these images a tension and a wait, common to these two worlds living side by side, sit on the same benches, walk on the same sidewalks without ever looking at each other. The striking contrast of these women, some dressed in the European, others dressed in the traditional Algerian costume in front of the same window. The oas acronyms painted on the walls, the reversed buses, shops and buildings for sale say the last warfares.
The hardness that marks this sequence slice with that devoted to Evian talks, another rare historical testimony. Epardon is then accredited to follow, Algerian side, the first round of discussions between France and the representatives of the provisional government of the Algerian Republic, from May 20 to June 13, 1961. In the Villa du Bois-d’Avault, near Geneva He immortalizes the elegance and smiles of the Algerian delegation that negotiates the terms of the future relationship with colonial power.
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