Raymond Depardon & Kamel DaoudSon œil dans ma main

Algeria 1961
Raymond Depardon, at the age of nineteen, was sent by the Delmas agency to report on a country in turmoil – the last stirrings of the Algerian war of independence. The young photographer captures his images at high speed; he collects about a hundred of them, all of them striking. He readily says that his conscience and sensitivity were decisively forged during this trip.

Raymond Depardon exhumed these photos (some of which were published in “Un aller pour Alger”, Points, 2010), and in a very strong and generous gesture, offered them to Barzakh and then to Images Plurielles, two publishing houses that have many authors with an international reputation.

The idea was born that Raymond Depardon should make another trip in 2019 to complete the 1961 photos with a “postscript”. This he did from 15 to 24 September 2019. He photographed Algiers, still in black and white, in its abundant contemporaneity. He also spent five days in Oran, where he met up with the writer Kamel Daoud for long strolls through the city. These proved so powerful that it was decided to keep about 30 of them.

Kamel Daoud, delighted by the project, wrote several texts.
They are almost disjointed from the photos, they will be meditations or wild reveries.
If we take up the distinction elaborated by Barthes, dear to Raymond Depardon: far from being “anchor-texts”, they will be “relay-texts”, autonomous in relation to the latter, without any apparent link with it, like “vision” texts.