ENCOUNTER – At the start of his career, this figure from the Gamma then Magnum agencies developed a passion for sports photography while covering the Tokyo games in 1964. As Paris 2024 approaches, Depardon looks back on his relationship with these popular events, hence Historical moments always emerge.
Raymond Depardon remembers his first days in Tokyo very well. October 1964. He is only 22 years old and has just finished his military service. The Olympic Games are about to begin. Japan opens up to the world, twenty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing has been translated for the thousands of foreigners who arrive in the capital, a concrete jungle teeming with kanji and hiragana incomprehensible to the gaijins (foreigners, in Japanese). Depardon has been a photographer for four years at the Dalmas Agency. He has already covered events in Algeria and the Vietnam War.
Legendary swimmer Mark Spitz. The American won 7 gold medals in 1972 in Munich. Raymond DEPARDON / MAGNUM PHOTOS
But his first Olympics were something else. “It was completely new for me to cover such an international competition, and I had absolutely no idea what to expecthe says. We were staying in former prison guards’ apartments that had been refurbished. We only got around by taxi because the metro was impossible: we didn’t understand anything.” He discovers the Olympic stadium…
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