Gérard Rondeau was born in Chalons-en-Champagne on 10 April in 1953, in a family of teachers. He studied in Reims and in the 1970s he worked at the Alliance Française in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The discovery of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book about the USSR, in the library of the Alliance, was a revelation for him. As soon as he was back in Champagne, he launched his career as a self-taught photographer. or over more than twenty years, he maintained a close partnership with the newspaper Le Monde, producing a large portrait collection of painters and contemporary writers, with lasting friendships emerging from those interactions. He photographed the painter Paul Rebeyrolle in action and traveled the battlefields of the First World War with the novelist Yves Gibeau. He toured some of the most famous music venues in the world with the Ysaÿe Quartet. He also proceeded with the realization of an inventory of the streets that marked his life with the help of the writer Bernard Franck, as well as went up the Marne with Jean-Paul Kauffman.

Gérard Rondeau, being a tireless journeyer, constantly traveled the world but still remained strongly attached to his native Champagne, where he chose to live, continuously re-examining its landscapes and its people. He re-discovered the hidden treasures of the Reims Cathedral. He explored museums behind the scenes for over twenty years; he covered the life of Sarajevo under siege, drew up a portrait of contemporary Morocco in the dialogue above time with Delacroix’s paintings and drawings, as well as uncovered the hidden face of the Tour de France. He accompanied Médecins du Monde’s missions throughout the world for over fifteen years. In his career, he took photographs of celebrities including Iggy Pop, Clint Eastwood, Peter Falk, Christian Louboutin, Serge Reggiani, Christian Lacroix, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Rossellini, Paul Bowles, Alain Bashung, Pierre Soulages, Jacques Derrida and Jim Jarmusch.

Rondeau traveled in a black-and-white world, taking countless roads, playing with words, interplays of shadow and silence, bringing stories to life and recreating worlds in pain. The author of numerous works, on travel, the scars of war, French and European heritage and the world of contemporary painters, Rondeau was a truly unique artist.


In the period from 1992 to 1996, Gérard Rondeau visited the besieged city of Sarajevo many times, the European victim of the last war trenches of the last century. There he made friends, including Zlatko Dizdarević, the then editor of the Oslobodjenje war editorial office. Together, they would, among other things, publish the book ‘Sarajevo, Silence and Nothing Around’, published by Actes Sud. With constant departures and arrivals between Sarajevo and Eastern France, in the true geography of war traces, but also the time between 1914-1918 and 1992-1996, this unique journey of Gérard Rondeau is based on his simultaneous visits to the sites of the First World War and the last, Bosnian one.

“I remember he came for the first time back in the autumn of ’92 with Francis Bueb, a wonderful enthusiast from Fnac in Paris. A few of us thought naively then that the war would stop faster if we formed a cultural center as a gathering place for world intellectuals ‘to carry the truth about Sarajevo’. Gerard had with him then, and each time later, only a small ‘Leica’, never any zoom lenses, piles of equipment, large lenses. We started with the ‘French bookstore’ in an abandoned shop across the street from ‘Napredak’. Francis, Bato Čengić, him, Srđan, some UNPROFOR guys who brought piles of books with Hercules planes… Imagine, war and books! That crew then may have unknowingly stepped into the creation of the Andre Marleaux Center. Gérard began his great life-long Sarajevo adventure, fundamentally different from all other photo-reporters, foreigners, who came and went. Only Milomir ‘Strašni’ was that blood type, but then again, he’s ours anyway.” Zlatko Dizdarević

Gérard Rondeau presented numerous solo shows in institutions such as the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris, The National Gallery in Jakarta, La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Luz Festival in Buenos-Aires, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. He invented specific photo series in Istanbul, New York, Rome and Sarajevo.


Sarajevo, January 1994
Gérard Rondeau (his gallery of Sarajevo during the war )

“People expect death. They walk the streets without rushing, in spite of the bullets and bombs raining down around them.
They don’t know how to run anymore. Anyway, the bullet from a gun will always be faster than desperate men running. There is no escape.” 


Gérard Rondeau

“You have to admit it, feels fantastic not to give a hoot whether you may or may not be the victim of a sniper.
Even bullets are no longer what they used to be in this place. They only make sense if people are scared.” 







Gérard Rondeau

Rondeau was the author of more than fifteen books and dozens of exhibitions around the globe. His work, books and exhibitions resemble personal diaries or novels. When he traveled to Ex-Yugoslavia with Médecins du Monde during the wars of the 1990s later he published it as his diary describing his experience. In 2007 he received the prize ‘Prix de l’Artiste de l’Année’ (best visual artist of the year) in the category ‘Arts Plastiques’ during the Globes de Cristal in Paris. You can find more of his work on his website.

Whether exploring the wings of a museum, chronicling besieged Sarajevo, discovering the lives of volunteers for Médecins du Monde, or following the Tour de France, Gérard Rondeau always knows how to choose an original angle that escapes stereotypes and clichés. For twenty years, he has amassed a considerable portrait collection of painters and contemporary writers, particularly one of his friend Paul Rebeyrolle long before the author was widely received or acknowledged. Eclectic, yet nevertheless precise in his projects, Rondeau develops a curious type of photography. It is sensible, demanding, and cultivated; not merely illustrative.

Intertwining personal stories with his privileged witnesses, Rondeau’s cosmos brings us to his constant wanderings on the path of war
and his photographs bring to light all the grief of a dying parish court, the silence of the battered landscapes, they tell us of death, remembrance, and utter absence.
Sarajevo, January 1994.


“At dawn, on the wall of the house they were so happy to come to after the war, in an old wooden frame from the East, I look at his already somewhat mythical photograph taken from the window of the Kamerni Theater in Sarajevo, in winter between ’92 and ’93. In the empty Tito St., in the snow, the silhouette of a single man, stepping somewhere across the tracks where no tram goes anymore… Somewhere behind him there used to be a big flower shop, on this side of the Romanija cinema. Never before did I look, or maybe I did, but forgot, what is on the back of that photo, printed as a postcard, for people around the world. At home in Skerlićeva St., we have that big, original photo with his signature, always with the same old ‘Mont Blanc’ fountain pen. I take the framed postcard off, and on the back, in big letters, it says ‘Someone waits for you in Sarajevo’…” Zlatko Dizdarević remembers the day he received the news that Gérard had passed away.

 


GÉRARD RONDEAU was born 10 April 1953 in Chalons-en-Champagne, France.

He died of cancer on 13 September 2016, at the Henri Mondor Hospital in Créteil, Val-de-Marne, France.




Special thanks to Zlatko Dizdarević
Translated by Mustafa Čorbo
Music used: ‘Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 5’
The song is permitted for non-commercial use under license:
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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