Gérard RONDEAU

Gérard Rondeau was born in Châlons-sur-Marne on April 10, 1953 in a family of teachers.

He studied in Reims, then from 1974 to 1976, headed the Alliance Française in Kandy (Sri Lanka). The discovery of the book About the USSR, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, in the Alliance library, will be a revelation. Back in Champagne, he engaged in photography on his own.

For more than twenty years, he will create a kind of companionship with the newspaper Le Monde, carrying out a very large collection of portraits of contemporary painters and writers.Strong friendships are born from these meetings. He photographs the painter Paul Rebeyrolle in action, travels the battlefields of the First World War with the novelist Yves Gibeau. With the Ysaÿe Quartet he visits the great stages of the world. With the writer Bernard Frank he takes an inventory of the streets of his life, goes up the Marne with Jean-Paul Kauffmann.

An indefatigable traveler, Gérard Rondeau travels the world but remains deeply linked to his native Champagne where he chose to live, taking a new look at the landscapes and the people who compose it.  He rediscovers the hidden treasures of the Reims Cathedral.  He explores behind the scenes of museums for twenty years, chronicles life in Sarajevo during the siege, paints a portrait of contemporary Morocco in a dialogue beyond time with the paintings and drawings of Delacroix, writes the hidden face of the Tour de France. For fifteen years, he will accompany the missions of Médecins du Monde around the world.

From the National Galleries of the Grand Palais in Paris to the National Gallery in Jakarta, from the European House of Photography in Paris to the Luz Festival in Buenos-Aires, from the Elysée Museum in Lausanne to the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin , Gérard Rondeau presents numerous personal exhibitions.  In Istanbul, New York, Sarajevo, Rome, he invents special series. Gérard Rondeau travels in a black and white world, he takes endless paths, searches for forgotten footsteps, plays with words, shadow plays and silences, he assembles stories and recreates suffering worlds.

He received the "Artist of the Year Award" in the "Plastic Arts" category in Paris at the Globes de Cristal 2007.

Gérard Rondeau died on September 13, 2016.