This was taken in 1998 at the Maison Centrale de Clairvaux, a former abbey turned high-security prison in France. Clairvaux is rough but the surroundings were impressive because it’s in Aube, up in the country’s north-east. We asked if we could visit solitary confinement, where prisoners are usually placed for fighting with other inmates or for not heeding discipline. But this man had actually requested to stay there. He wanted to be alone, he just felt better there.
Solitary is usually a bare-bones cell. But this inmate had a courtyard to himself. You can see the netting above him as he jogs. All traditional French prisons have that, to stop escapes via helicopter. It was difficult to photograph imprisonment in France. Unlike in the US, you can’t shoot prisoners’ faces. And there’s nothing much to photograph anyway – little is provided for the prisoners, it’s raw.
We understand immediately that this is a prison, an old one, thanks to the confined courtyard with its ancient walls. In a modern jail – of which there are many in France – architects don’t create big courtyards, there aren’t old stones and the grass doesn’t grow. The worn path here looks like something by the land artist Richard Long – and there’s this incredible grass growing because nobody walks or runs on it.
That’s his path, his cross to bear alone. He’d been there for years. I didn’t ask what he’d done. It’s not my role as a photographer to know his name or who he is. But I imagine that, since he was at Clairvaux, he was there for a long time. And it probably wasn’t for one murder, but for several. If that is the story – that he killed people, his wife or his mistress – I’m not interested. Prisons are full of people like that.
I’ve photographed hostages and been a prisoner myself, in Chad. This man, however, seems to have more in common with inmates of a psychiatric institution than a prison. He was probably a little crazy already: he wanted to be in solitary confinement.
This shot was meant to accompany an article about ageing but it never ran, so the photo remained in the Magnum archives, and has never been exhibited or published until now. When I started as a press photographer, I was always told to get a scoop. But you maybe only get one or two scoops in your whole life. And anyway, you can show something much powerful with a temps faible – an unassuming moment.
Raymond Depardon’s CV
Born: Villefranche-sur-Saône, 1942
Trained: Apprenticed with a photographer-optician in Villefranche-sur-Saône
Influences: “I managed to rid myself of the influence of Cartier-Bresson:to admit that I wasn’t him, but was a photographer nonetheless.”
- Raymond Depardon: Traverser is at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, until 24 December.
