As the third stage of its partnership with the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Triennale Milano is hosting La vita moderna (Modern Life), the largest Raymond Depardon exhibition ever held. Depardon's career as a French photographer is both long and fundamental, ranging from his work as a photojournalist in the 1960s to his work as a director in collaboration with Claudine Nougaret, from the foundation of the Gamma agency with Gilles Caron to his collaboration with Magnum, from his participation in the Mission photographique de la DATAR to the seminal Beyrouth centre-ville. The major exhibition, curated by the artist Jean–Michel Alberola, spans eight photographic series and two films. The central thread is provided by Errance (1999-2000), where the vertical format and the centrality of the viewpoint offer a vision that is both pure and mediated, and the large wall prints converse with the small, framed ones, underlining the relationship between immersion and contemplation on the one hand and displacement and restlessness on the other. The perfect identity between form and content continues in the room dedicated to La France, the series that from 2004 to 2010 took Depardon around the provinces of his country in a van, photographed in colour and in large format: the complexity of the production and the magniloquence of the setting mirror the stories of a minor France, to which dignity and importance are restored. This is followed by the immense Rural (1990-2018), on show for the first time, the specular but incomparable Piedmont and Communes (2001 and 2020), the Nordic colours of Glasgow and the black and white alienation of Manhattan Out (both 1980) and above all San Clemente (1979-1980), a vivid and participatory account of Italian psychiatric hospitals during the years of the Basaglia revolution. The films New York, N.Y. (1986) and San Clemente (1980) complete a simply unmissable exhibition. (Triennale Milano, viale Alemagna 6, Milan, until 10 April 2022).
Raymond Depardon Frazione Saint Martin d’Orb, Le Bousquet d’Orb, Hérault, 2020, copyright Raymond Depardon / Magnum Photos