Image: Raymond Depardon, Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire, Nièvre, 2009, Tirage argentico-numérique couleur, 54 x 67,5 cm (sans cadre) © Raymond Depardon / Magnum Photos Pinault Collection
Some fifty photographs by Raymond Depardon from the Pinault Collection, devoted to the landscapes of France, are on view in Gallery 3 of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris until 25 January 2027. The presentation of his series La France forms part of Remember Me, the exhibition for which the Bourse de Commerce is, for the first time, devoting all of its spaces to photography.
La France looks at the roads, homes, shops and natural environments that make up the French landscape. In the 1980s, Depardon (b. 1942) began a long-term documentary project about France in the spirit of the American photographer Walker Evans, whose work he greatly admires. He travelled across the country in his van, methodically surveying it with a large-format camera mounted on a tripod, and set himself the constraint of making just one image in each location as a way to slow down and observe more precisely. He concentrated on small provincial towns — intermediary spaces, neither fully urban nor fully rural, that had traditionally been overlooked in depictions of the country's landscape.
The series continues a documentary tradition that grapples with typology, a central concern in contemporary photography. Yet, as the Pinault Collection notes, Depardon's images are anything but cold and analytical. Beneath their apparent simplicity lie a delicate sense of humour, careful attention to the simplest details and an affection for these places and the people who live in them, turning methodical observation into a sensitive and accurate portrait of a country.
The founder of the Gamma photo agency and a member of Magnum, Depardon remains a key figure in the history of photojournalism and documentary photography in France and internationally, across both his photographic projects and his films. Looking at both the energy of the street and the silence of vast open spaces, his work follows one simple motto: "Capture life wherever you find it."
The presentation is curated by Matthieu Humery, photography advisor to the Pinault Collection, with the collaboration of Lola Regard, research director. Remember Me itself brings together around 700 works by more than 70 artists in a free-flowing, non-chronological journey through the history of photography, from Gustave Le Gray to Annie Leibovitz, and runs until 18 January 2027.
