Rural

About half of the eighty-six black-and-white photographs in Rural were made in Lozère. At the Musée du Gévaudan in Mende, the series could be seen in the very département where so much of it began. The loan from the Musée Fabre in Montpellier brought the complete series together for its first showing in France.

Raymond Depardon made these photographs between the 1980s and the 2000s. Lozère sits alongside the Haute-Loire, the Ardèche and the Hérault in this portrait of rural France. Organising the prints by place and subject allowed visitors to follow one territory closely, then look across a departmental boundary at another.

Two photographs made five years apart bring us back to Le Villaret. In 1999, Raymond Privat walks with his flock along a narrow road. In 2004, sheep stand close together inside a barn. A shaft of light across their backs traces the shape of the flock in the dark.

Exhibition at the Musée du Gévaudan