Mathias DEPARDON
Mathias DEPARDON
Transanatolia is a peregrination to the borders of Anatolia.
For five years, Mathias Depardon has photographed “Greater Turkey“, right up to the borders of Azerbaijan and Xinjiang, where Turkey remains the “motherland“.
The fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the World War I remains a trauma, and pushing back the borders is a way to take revenge against a historical wound.
These remote places help to understand the great changes that are shaking the region. Throughportraits and landscapes, Mathias Depardon probes a country torn between the utmostmodernization and Ottoman reminiscences.
Biography
Born in France in 1980, Mathias Depardon was raised between France, Belgium and the USA. Afterstudying communication and journalism in Brussels, Mathias briefly joined the Belgian national newspaper Le Soir before devoting himself to reportage and feature work.
His immersive process and slower approach to journalism allow for comprehensive bodies of workthat reveal and frame important social, economic and political issues in territories under tension suchas Turkey and Iraq where he questions the idea of identity and territory. Through series of portraits and landscapes, Mathias Depardon probe a Turkey torn between modernization and the reminiscenceof the ottoman values evoking the notion of Pan-Turkism in the neighboring countries.
In 2018 he is the finalist of the “Grand Prix de la Photographie Documentaire“ in Sète and the recipient of the CNAP Grant (Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris) for ContemporaryDocumentary Photography. During the 49th edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles, he exhibited as part of ‘A Pillar of Smoke’ – a look at Turkey’s contemporary photography scene.
In 2019 he is the laureate of “Les Regards du Grand Paris“ in partnership with Les Ateliers Médicis and CNAP. In 2020 he’s the winner of the Yves Rocher Foundation Grant which will allow him to pursue hisproject on the drying out of the Mesopotamian Rivers.
Exhibitions have included the Bibliothèque nationale de France and more recently the Musée des Archives nationales in Paris for his solo exhibition TRANS ANATOLIA (2017).
He’s work is published and commissioned regularly by leading international periodicals includingNational Geographic, M Le Magazine du Monde, Le Figaro Magazine along with photographicperiodicals such as The British Journal of Photography and The European Photography Magazine among others. He is a member of The Photo Society / National Geographic and the author of TRANS ANATOLIA / André Frère Editions 2020.
Press
2021
Arte TV 2021, Transanatolia : 5 ans de pérégrination du photographe Mathias Depardon, Richard Bonnet
Le Figaro Magazine, Rêveries Ottomanes, April 16th 2021, Cyril Drouhet
Libération, Mathias Depardon, rêves d’Anatolie, February 13th – 14th 2021, Julien Gester
2020
Réponses Photo, L’Empire autrement, December 2020, Julien Bolle
Fisheye Magazine, « TransAnatolia » : voyage aux frontières du cœur, December, Julien Hory
Vice, En virée aux confins de l’Anatolie, December 17th, Pierre Longeray