Raymond Depardon: Desert

The desert as seen by Raymond Depardon through 60 years of political reporting, photographic commissions, film shoots and personal explorations in North Africa and the Middle East. Eleven countries, their landscapes, peoples and conflicts, immortalised in black and white by a legend of photojournalism.

From his first trip to Algeria as a photojournalist in 1960, Raymond Depardon instantly developed a deep and intimate attachment to the Saharan desert and its various peoples.

His photographic and cinematographic eye is particularly focused on the different regions of Chad, from the civil war that affected the country, during which he followed the rebels into the desert (1970) and covered the Claustre affair (1975), the attack on Faya-Largeau (1978) and Goukouni Oueddei's accession to power (1979), to the shooting of the film Un homme sans l'Occident among the azzas of Borkou (2001). His reports also took him on the route of the riches of the Middle East (1968), of Tuareg refugees in Mali (1974) and Paris-Dakar pilots in Libya and Niger (1990). To shoot his films Empty Quarter (1984) and La Captive du désert (1989), he crossed Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

First with Claudine Nougaret, then with their children, he shares his love of the Sahara, the Sahel and their inhabitants. This book is a photographic tribute to all the African deserts that have accompanied Raymond Depardon's career and life for over sixty years.