Cross interview

Algeria 1961-2019: the eye of Raymond Depardon and the hand of Kamel Daoud

View of the Raymond Depardon/Kamel Daoud exhibition: “His eye in my hand.

Algeria 1961-2019”, at the Institute of the Arab World (IMA), in Paris.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

7 mins

During the Evian Accords, on March 18, 1962, Raymond Depardon was 19 years old.

During the negotiations between France and the FLN, he was one of the few photographers present on site during this historic event which ended the war.

At the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, the cult photographer revisits this unique moment with images taken during his two trips to Algeria, in 1961 and 2019, and unpublished texts by the great Algerian writer Kamel Daoud .

Advertising

Read more

His eye in my hand.

Algeria 1961-2019

.

The result of this meeting between Raymond Depardon and Kamel Daoud took the form of an exhibition presenting a hundred photographs and texts that are both “ 

 ”.

RFI: What was the first photo you took in 1961 on Algerian soil

Raymond Depardon

It's a photo in the center of town, in the gardens, in front of the main post office.

It was impressive for a young Frenchman who was 19 in 1961. We left Marseille by boat and arrived in a city incredibly bigger than Marseille.

People today cannot imagine that in the 1960s it was the same country!

So, we left a small town in the Mediterranean and arrived in the Bay of Algiers, in a huge white town.

I arrived there, in a somewhat curious, anachronistic place.

There were Algerians, Africans, plus a million Europeans.

It was very strange.

The great photographers, my "elders", they were fed up, because they were badly received.

It was difficult to take pictures.

It was very disturbing,

because it was a city where we spoke French and at the same time we were not in France.

We were frowned upon, rejected.

So, I had these photos and I thought it would be good, sixty years after the independence of Algeria, for these photos to be reclaimed by the Algerians.

They belong to the Algerians, to Algerian history.

{{ scope.counterText }}

{{ scope.legend }} © {{ scope.credits }}

{{ scope.counterText }}

I

{{ scope.legend }}

© {{ scope.credits }}

RFI

Kamel Daoud

Because you have to make the effort to give images, you need a policy, a will to do so, a cultural policy, tourism, travel, visas – in both directions.

The other aspect is that there is a screen effect of the archives, that is to say that we always see Algeria through its archives during the war of liberation.

These archives also form a screen and do not allow the present to pass.

We always talk about the past.

Algeria is also a country locked in memory by others.

We only talk about it when it comes to colonization or decolonization, rarely in the present tense.

The news item is a bit like the tragedy of the migrant boats, if not the dark decade and the fight against the Islamists, etc.

But the real country has no images.

[Video] The photographer Raymond Depardon in a word, a gesture and a silence

Portrait of photographer Raymond Depardon in a word, a gesture and a silence.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

01:57

Why have your photos taken during the Evian Accords become iconic in Algeria

Raymond Depardon

When I showed these photos to the Algerians, that was the second shock.

They said to me: “ 

 » [

] They were more or less all dismissed, even executed, because they did not agree with the power afterwards.

In the photos, these people are very happy, super well dressed.

At the time, I had never seen Algerians like that, nice, speaking French, we could take all the photos we wanted.

I was in this villa, on the Swiss side, opposite Evian.

And every morning there was a helicopter that shuttled.

View of the Raymond Depardon/Kamel Daoud exhibition: “His eye in my hand.

Algeria 1961-2019”, at the Institute of the Arab World (IMA), in Paris.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

RFI

Kamel Daoud

When we look at a photo, we do so with his person, his objectivity, his culture, his prejudices, his conditioning.

A photo always wakes up.

A photo always provokes text, emotion, nostalgia.

Even a photo of an unknown landscape provokes a reflection, an affect, a feeling, sensations.

For me, it was a question of writing texts which do not add something to the photo, because it is self-sufficient, but of writing texts which start from the photo to end up in something else. .

Texts that revolve around the photo, but which are accompanying texts rather than commentary or reflection texts.

I didn't want to limit the gaze of the reader or the visitor, but just to say: this is what I feel.

At the same time, I wanted to free the gaze.

Everyone should feel free to look at these photos as they wish.

Instead of looking at them through its culture or just the usual history or cliches.

View of the Raymond Depardon/Kamel Daoud exhibition: “His eye in my hand.

Algeria 1961-2019”, at the Institute of the Arab World (IMA), in Paris.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

In 2019, returning to Algiers, did you ever have in mind a photo that you absolutely wanted to take

At the invitation of the Algerians, we returned to the streets of Algiers and Oran.

Show me your street and I'll tell you who you are.

As Kamel Daoud says: “ 

 »

►

View of the Raymond Depardon/Kamel Daoud exhibition: “His eye in my hand.

Algeria 1961-2019”, at the Institute of the Arab World (IMA), in Paris.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• France

• Algeria

• Photography

• Literature

• Culture

• Africa culture