ARLES, FRANCE.- The Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie at Arles will take place from July 4th to July 9th. François Barré, President, Rencontres d’Arles, wrote, “The Rencontres come and go, and you don’t always see the same faces: our curiosity is too vast and the world vaster still. And François Hébel, whom I’ll refrain from praising out of respect for his modesty, has gone even further (and wider) a field in this year’s choice of a journey whose poles are Raymond Depardon and the French language. The venture may seem paradoxical and even a sign of in turning and defensiveness, but nothing could be further from the truth: our journey is one of brotherhood, from archipelago to archipelago. Raymond Depardon is, and intends to be, a man for all seasons: photoreporter, documentary and fiction filmmaker, a long-haul creative artist. This farmer-globetrotter left his land to explore the world in all its multiple facets: human beings, all of them - farmers and celebrities, politicians and passers-by, the powerful and the victims; territories, all of them - places and non-places, tilled fields and battlefields, countless cities and infinite deserts. Torn between land and people, between the soil of his origins and the mutter of the world, between the bright lights and the conflicts, he offers us our portrait and his own.”