Gérard Rondeau is presenting a selection of his wide range of portraits. For many years now he has been photographing internationally famous artists, musicians, writers, designers and philosophers. The portraits on display in Berlin include those of Louise Bourgeois, Georg Baselitz, Susan Sontag, Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Jim Jarmusch and Carla Bruni. His works continue the tradition established by the great French portrait photographer, Nadar, who produced unforgettable pictures of the intellectual and cultural elite of his time.

Rondeau is also exhibiting a part of his long-term Hors cadre series, in which he takes a look behind the scenes of major museums and shows valuable works of art ‘outside the familiar context’, i.e. during the installation and dismantling of an exhibition, packaged, propped up against a wall or being transported. The sublime and the timeless thus encounter and profane and the temporary, producing images of great poetry.

Gérard Rondeau, born in Châlon-sur-Marne in 1953, lives in the province of Champagne. He is a member of the renowned French photographic agency VU and has worked for over 20 years as a photojournalist and portrait photographer for the daily newspaper Le Monde. Rondeau’s Hors cadre series formed part of a comprehensive exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2005.

During the Globes de cristal 2007 award ceremony on 5 February 2007 Gérard Rondeau was honoured by 3,000 French cultural journalists as French Artist of the Year.

Gérard Rondeau bibliography:

J’ai sabré ce dernier siècle place royale, éditions Alibis, 2000

Rebeyrolle ou le journal d’un peintre. Coll. Photogalerie, Editions Ides et Calendes, 2000

L’Abbaye de Fontevraud, éditions Robert Laffont, 2001, préface de Chantal Colleu-Dumond

L’Echappée libre (Tour de France 2001), édition du Seuil, 2001, préface de Michel Onfray

Sur les lieux du regard. French Museums / Intimate Portraits Editions Artha, 2003

Antonin Artaud à Vile-Evrard Editions Le temps qu’il fait, texte d’Alice Becker-Ho, 2003

Les Fantômes du Chemin des Dames – Le Presbytère d’Yves Gibeau. Editions du Seuil, 2003

Voyages au Bénin, Editions L’Arganier, 2004.

Hors Cadre, RMN éditions, texte de Jean Clair et Christian Caujolle, 2005

Missions (Médecins du Monde) éditions du Seuil, 2005

Chroniques d’un portraitiste, texte de Philippe Dagen, Seuil 2006