EXPO: Regards sur le Pont

Carte blanche to Raymond Depardon

There are no limits to wandering! Especially when it's a chance to meet up, as was the case a few months ago between Raymond Depardon and the Pont du Gard. It was an encounter that prompted one of the greatest names in world photography to spend several days setting up his Ries wooden tripod and his Folding bellows camera on the sometimes steep terrain of the Gard site, to extract a strong point of view from a place he considers ‘aesthetically magnificent’.

Like a painter with his easel, he moved around according to the light, the framing, but above all his desires, in order to imprint on the film the revealing image, the one that mixes reality and thought. An adept of the other side of time, shunning the obvious shots and preferring elsewhere, he has managed to find the right distance here, the one that succeeds in capturing the image that speaks for itself.

Raymond Depardon is clearly an observer. He tirelessly explores the world around him without ever closing his eyes to reality. For over sixty years, he has criss-crossed the globe, seeking to get as close as possible to the heart of humanity. In the course of his wanderings, he has crossed landscapes and encountered shadows. Yesterday, at the foot of the thousand-year-old bridge, he went to meet the present, to experience space. Calm and serene, accompanied by his 20x25 camera, he took the time to photograph the light, the stones and the silence that surround the monumental Roman structure, deliberately taking only two or three shots from any one point of view.

At the end of the session, he approached, blue-eyed and with a smile on his face, declaring: ‘I enjoyed myself. I could spend six months photographing the place. But for the time being, Raymond Depardon's eye continues to search, determined to see elsewhere!

Raymond Depardon

Raymond Depardon, born in Villefranche-sur-Saône in 1942, is one of the leading figures in French photography and documentary film. From the 1960s onwards, as a photographer, filmmaker and journalist, he developed a humanist and committed body of work, marked by a deep concern for social, political and intimate realities.

A major mosaic exhibition on the Pont du Gard 

This exhibition offers a sensitive and artistic exploration of the Pont du Gard through the eyes of artists, professionals, scientists and the personal reflections of regular visitors to the site. It brings together a variety of works (paintings, photographs, installations, videos) with the impressions, memories and visions of privileged witnesses, offering an immersive and participative experience: from classic French paintings of the 19th century to the luminous creations of the American artist James Turrell, from the expressionist paintings of Bernard Buffet to one of the oldest engravings of the monument by Jean Poldo d'Albénas dating from the middle of the 16th century, from the narrative paintings of the Gard native Gérard Lattier to the souvenir objects that bear witness to the advent of tourism.

The exhibition also showcases the work of the architects, botanists, landscape architects and archaeologists who transformed the Pont du Gard site in the early 2000s, as well as the way in which local residents and regular visitors have come to appreciate this emblematic site as part of their daily lives.

It's an invitation to reflect on how a historic monument can be perceived differently depending on the era, artistic sensibilities and personal experiences, while at the same time creating a living collective memory around an emblematic monument included on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1985.
A symbol of our roots in a shared history!

Practical info :

From 20 June to 2 November 2025

On the left bank, in the Temporary Exhibition Hall

Exhibition included in the entrance ticket to the discovery areas