Raymond Depardon (b. 6 July 1942, Villefranche-sur-Saône, France) is a French photographer, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker. In 1966, Depardon co-founded the photojournalism agency Gamma and became its director in 1974. He became an associate of Magnum Photos in 1978 and has been a full member since 1979. Depardon is also the author of several documentary shorts and feature films notably including 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[1] 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 was received the Dragon of Dragons, a lifetime achievement award. As a director, Depardon's approach is influenced by cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema.
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.[2] He began his career as a photojournalist in the early 1960s. He travelled to conflict zones including Algeria, Vietnam, Biafra and Chad. He covered the Prague Spring and directed his first short film Jan Palach (1969) about Jan Palach, a Czech student who self-immolated in protest of Soviet occupation.
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