In his sublime short film New York, NY (1986), Raymond Depardon speaks in a voice-over that could almost be verse:
I came to New York to make a film
From afar it all seemed clear
Every day at the same hour I went out with my camera
It was winter and the days were short
The light escaped me every evening, swallowed by the night
I would stop in a café
And watch the people in the street returning home after work
Then I went back to my hotel room
I couldn’t film the city
It was too powerful, my thoughts were elsewhere
The days went by, I’d run out of film stock
I went back to Paris, and forgot about the film
A similar story is behind the photographs currently on display at the Espace Jorg Brockmann in Switzerland. In 1980, Raymond Depardon came to New York with a friend. When he went out for the day, he would wear his camera around his neck and shoot from his chest without aiming. He came back to Paris and forgot about the films.
He developed them 27 years later. The images are impulsive and resolute, and they capture the era’s aesthetics of both photography and fashion, with tight-fitting fur coats, hip-hop hoodies and New Wave hairdos. And if those clues aren’t enough, the cars set the scene, with their straight lines and matte finish.
This is New York in the 1980s, and this is Depardon in the 1980s. He had just joined Magnum, published Notes and had yet to start his series La Correspondance New Yorkaise for the French newspaper Libération. But he was already out in the street every day, turning it into a testing ground, timing his steps to the click of his shutter and taking pictures like the wink of an eye.
EXHIBITION
Raymond Depardon: New York
March 15 – May 15, 2014
Espace Jörg Brockmann
32 rue des Noirettes, studio 526
1227 Carouge-Switzerland
Switzerland
Tél. : +41 79 668 67 32
http://www.espacejb.com
