Noted Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon here presents a candid autobiography, illustrated with his own photographs as well as ones culled from the family archives. The book shuttles readers back and forth between the past and present, contrasting old family photos and Depardon's first photographs with two-page color spreads depicting more recent views of the environs. Still, with compelling images and considered, engaging text Depardon manages to avoid the self-absorption that can taint autobiography. Depardon clearly understands how affective photography can be (as both a practice and an object of study), and he articulates elusive phenomenological issues with images that recall Lartigue's spontaneity and with an elegance and wit that rivals Roland Barthes' much better-known book La chambre claire / Camera Lucida.

From Magnum: "Located one kilometer from the Saône River and 500 meters from the Paris-Lyon freeway, this farm belongs to Raymond Depardon's parents. The house dates back to the sixteenth century. That's where Raymond Depardon took his first photographs. That's where he grew up. First prints, first emotions. La Ferme du Garet is not only an autobiographical book but it is also 'a place that has many like it throughout France. Yesterday, it was the countryside; today it is the city's periphery. 'And tomorrow?' asks the photographer while contently mixing memory-filled black and white pictures with more recent color pictures, which allows him to assess the time that's gone by."

Raymond Depardon "La ferme du Garet"
Actes 2006
first edition Editions Carrè 1995