Rencontres d'Arles
2006: "Companions
and Fellow Travelers" selections by Raymond Depardon

As one sub-theme of this year's festival of photography, guest-curator Raymond Depardon chose to highlight the work of many of his friends, photographers and artists of yesterday and today, people who have helped him and with whom ongoing exchange has brought mutual enrichment. Photographing the world, they commuincate in a range of genres covering reportage, celebrities, fashion and contemporary art.

Depardon had this to say in his opening remarks:

"When François Hébel invited me to be guest curator at the 2006 Rencontres d'Arles, I immediately thought of my photographic "fellow travellers": of putting their work on show as a reminder of their personalities, and of the itineraries of several generations of photographers, all of them now recognised even if some are no longer with us. Their homes are in New York, London and Paris, and even when our paths are different, we share the same passion: "photographing the world" as best we can and passing the message on. This is why we are all attached in our own way to getting photographers together in agencies as a means to freedom in disseminating our pictures.

"Most of all, though, there was that French thing: not waiting around, not wanting to rely on an editor, but rather getting involved, not being put off, intervening, dropping the notion of the pseudo-neutrality of photojournalism – and even putting our point of view in writing, asserting the existence of a human being behind each photograph. Vulnerable, prideful, solitary, concerned, courageous and even, sometimes, naive – in the way that made top American pictures editors Carole Kismaric and John Durniak say we were "so French". We wanted control over our captions, and why not the layout while we were at it, and we wanted to publish our own books because our friends were dying off and people were trying to make us believe that was the way things were. Gilles Caron, Michel Laurent and Olivier Rebbot and plenty of others with whom I'd photographed war, suffering and revolt. They were thirty when they died – murdered or cut down by not-so-stray bullets – and left daughters, wives and sisters behind. So not everyone will be present, but at least there will be a tribute to that founding school, and those who have left us will not be forgotten."