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Emmanuel Macron will chair, Saturday, March 19 at the Elysée, a ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords, which ended the war in Algeria. On this occasion, the 19/20 met Raymond Depardon, famous photographer who immortalized this war.
In 1961, Raymond Depardon was 19 when he left for Algeria for the first time. He remembers the atmosphere that reigned then, on the other side of the Mediterranean: “At the time, I was told ‘Raymond, if you get arrested, you hide your films.‘ (…) It was violent as an era”. 60 years later, his photos recount the last months of French Algeria, after seven years of fratricidal war and thousands of deaths.
With simple shots, Raymond Depardon depicts the tragedy that reigns. The photographer does not take sides. In the streets of Algiers (Algeria)he captures the daily malaise of two communities that are turning their backs definitively, after 130 years of colonization. Raymond Depardon also followed the Algerian delegation during the peace negotiations, which resulted on March 18, 1962 in the Évian Accords.