Luc Delahaye (born 1962) is a French photographer known for his large-scale color works depicting conflicts, world events or social issues. His pictures are characterized by detachment, directness and rich details, a documentary approach which is however countered by dramatic intensity and a narrative structure.
Delahaye has been awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal twice, the Oskar Barnack Award, an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the Prix Pictet.
Career
Delahaye started his career as a photojournalist. He joined the photo agency Sipa Press in the mid-1980s and dedicated himself to war reporting. In 1994, he joined the Magnum Photos cooperative and Newsweek magazine (he left Magnum in 2004). He worked during the 1980s and 1990s as a war photographer in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, the Gulf, Chechnya, and Lebanon. His photography was characterized by its raw, direct recording of news and often combined a perilous closeness to events with an intellectual detachment in the questioning of his own presence. This concern was later mirrored in minimalist series published as books, notably Portrait/1, a set of photobooth portraits of homeless people and L'Autre, a series of candid portraits made with a hidden camera in the Paris subway. With Winterreise, he explored the social consequences of the economic depression in Russia, "travelling from Moscow to Vladivostok, during which he spent months in the hovels of Russia's underclass". In 2001, Delahaye conducted a radical formal change. Documenting conflicts, political events or social issues, his pictures are made using large or medium format cameras, sometimes edited on computers and are shown in museums. While exploring the boundaries between reality and the imaginary, they constitute documents-monuments of immediate history, and urge reflection "upon the relationships among art, history and information".
Books
Portraits/1 (Sommaire, 1996) Memo (Hazan, 1997) L'Autre (Phaidon, 1999) Winterreise (Phaidon, 2000) Une Ville (Xavier Barral, 2003) History (Chris Boot, 2003) Luc Delahaye 2006–2010 (Steidl, 2011)
Awards
1992: Robert Capa Gold Medal
2000: Oskar Barnack Award
2001: Infinity Award: Photojournalism, International Center of Photography, New York 2001: Robert Capa Gold Medal 2002: Niepce Prize 2002: Photojournalism prize, Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents 2005: Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012: Prix Pictet
Collections
Delahaye's work is held in the following public collections: Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: 2 prints (as of June 2021) High Museum of Art, Atlanta Huis Marseille, Amsterdam International Center of Photography, New York: 1 print (as of June 2021) Los Angeles County Museum of Art: 7 prints (as of June 2021)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa: 1 print (as of June 2021) National Media Museum, Bradford, UK San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco: 2 prints (as of June 2021) Tate, UK: 7 prints (as of June 2021)
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
Rencontres d'Arles festival (2001) Völklingen Ironworks (2002) (2002) Kunsthalle Rostock (2002) Kunsthal (Rotterdam, 2002) National Media Museum (Bradford, 2004) Huis Marseille (Amsterdam, 2004) Cleveland Museum of Art (2005) Sprengel Museum (Hanover, 2006) Recent History: Photographs by Luc Delahaye, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2007
Group exhibitions
2014: Conflict, Time, PhotographyTate Modern, London, 26 November 2014 – 15 March 2015Museum Folkwang, Essen, 10 April – 5 July 2015Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany, 31 July – 25 October 2015
References
External links
"A Conversation with Quentin Bajac" (PDF), Galerie Nathalie Obadia. Luc Delahaye - Une position dans le réel. Artpress, June 2018. World mergers: Michael Fried on Luc Delahaye. ArtForum, March 2006. Luc Delahaye on the Getty Museum website. Luc Delahaye - Décision d'un instant. Artpress, October 2004. Luc Delahaye on ArtFacts.