Description

The Mexican Olympics in 1968 took place against a backdrop of student protest. French photographer Raymond Depardon, a founding member of the Gamma agency for whom he worked at this time, was present to capture the games themselves including the Black Power salute by America’s athletes in support of the Civil Rights struggles there. Depardon subsequently joined Magnum in 1978 and has since pursued an illustrious dual career as photographer and award-winning filmmaker. Pictured here, American athletes Larry James, Lee Evans and Ron Freeman on the 400 metres podium demonstrate against American race discrimination.

The photographer is filled with doubt. Nothing will soothe him

Raymond Depardon
© Raymond Depardon | Magnum Photos

Raymond Depardon, born in France in 1942, began taking photographs on his family farm in Garet at the age of 12. Apprenticed to a photographer-optician in Villefranche-sur-Saône, he left for Paris in 1958.

He joined the Dalmas agency in Paris in 1960 as a reporter, and in 1966 he co-founded the Gamma agency, reporting from all over the world. From 1974 to 1977, as a photographer and filmmaker, he covered the kidnap of a French ethnologist, François Claustre, in northern Chad.

Alongside his photographic career, he began to make documentary films: 1974, Une Partie de Campagne and San Clemente. He has since made eighteen feature-length films and published forty-seven books.

Depardon joined Magnum in 1978. He is based in Paris.

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