Raymond Depardon, Communes
45 €
Communes is a photographic essay by Raymond Depardon on the villages of the French Mediterranean inland region. Witnesses to history, these villages have long been abandoned, threatened by the “Nant concession”, a shale gas extraction project. After the inhabitants’ protestations, the project was finally abandoned in 2015. The villages have once again turned into living places, with their cobbled streets and old houses with jagged facades and scanty windows. Timeless havens of peace, where tranquility and cool prevail.
This new photo book gathers Raymond Depardon’s most recent series: the 80 black-and-white photographs that compose it were taken after the first lockdown, during the summer of 2020, in the south of the Massif Central in the French departments of Aveyron, Lozère, Gard, and Hérault.
The book includes a text by Salomé Berlioux.
Hardback, 28,5 × 36 cm, 128 pages
80 black-and-white photographs
“I discovered in the spring of 2020 the list of the permis de Nant, an inventory of the 280 French villages designated for shale gas extraction by a Texan oil company. [...] During the summer, intrigued, I went to photograph these villages with my view camera by chance of the lights and the particular architecture of these houses of Occitania.” Raymond Depardon
