Raymond Depardon receives the BnF prize for his entire work

This is a historic first: the 15^e price of the National Library of France – an annual award usually given to writers, historians or philosophers – was awarded to a photographer !

Not just any one since it is indeed Raymond Depardon (born in 1942) who saw the entirety of his work crowned by the venerable institution, this Monday, September 30 in the superb Oval Room of the Richelieu site, during its annual gala dinner intended to raise funds for the acquisition of rare works or manuscripts.

An emblematic exhibition at the BnF in 2010

By honoring this “multi-talented artist, observer of contemporary society”, the BnF “recalls the importance of photography in its heritage collections and cultural events,” declared Gilles Pécout, president of the institution. The latter in fact not only preserves books and manuscripts, but also drawings, prints, photographs, videos and films. Present in the BnF collections, the French photographer and filmmaker was at the origin of one of the greatest public successes of the prestigious establishment: the exhibition “The France of Raymond Depardon”presented in 2010, 14 years ago to the day.

With his gaze both sensitive and direct, Raymond Depardon is “one of the greatest witnesses of his time”underlined the BnF in a press release which salutes “its photographic reports of rare intensity”, “his many books where he weaves a close link between text and image” and « ses films where he captures the daily life of a constantly evolving society.”

Depardon, insatiable observer

Co-founder of the Gamma agency in 1966, and member of Magnum Photos from 1979, Depardon distinguished himself with reports covering world news (notably the hostage-taking in Chad of the ethnologist Françoise Claustre in 1974, or the fall of the Berlin Wall) and documentariesincluding a feature film on the election of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1974. In 1984, he participated in the Datar photographic mission, launched to immortalize the changing French landscape – a great adventure that this son of farmers later continued on his own account by documenting rural France for five years from 2004, as well as with his film French newspaper (2012), produced with his wife, sound engineer and producer Claudine Nougaret, while traveling the country in a campervan.

This insatiable surveyor of territories had already seen his work honored several times, notably with the national grand prize for photography in 1991, the César for best documentary film pour Flagrant offenses in 1995, and the Louis-Delluc prize for his film Modern Life in 2008.

The BnF prize finally opens up to other disciplines

Awarded annually since 2009 and endowed with 10,000 eurosthe BnF prize recognizes the entire work of a living French-speaking author. By succeeding a long line of writers including Philippe Sollers, Patrick Modiano, Jean Echenoz, Virginie Despentes and Pascal Quignard, Raymond Depardon marks the opening of the prize to a greater diversity of disciplines. As the BnF’s collections are also rich in works on paper, we can possibly hope for the recognition of a designer in the coming years…