Luc Delahaye (born 1962) is a French photographer known for his large-scale color works depicting conflicts, world events or social issues. His pictures are characterized by detachment, directness and rich details, a documentary approach which is however countered by dramatic intensity and a narrative structure.[1]
Delahaye started his career as a photojournalist. He joined the photo agency Sipa Press in the mid-1980s and dedicated himself to war reporting. In 1994, he joined the Magnum Photos cooperative and Newsweek magazine (he left Magnum in 2004).[2] He worked during the 1980s and 1990s as a war photographer in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, the Gulf,[7] Chechnya,[8] and Lebanon. His photography was characterized by its raw, direct recording of news and often combined a perilous closeness to events with an intellectual detachment in the questioning of his own presence.[2][9] This concern was later mirrored in minimalist series published as books, notably Portrait/1, a set of photobooth portraits of homeless people and L'Autre, a series of candid portraits made with a hidden camera in the Paris subway.[7] With Winterreise, he explored the social consequences of the economic depression in Russia, "travelling from Moscow to Vladivostok, during which he spent months in the hovels of Russia's underclass".[7] In 2001, Delahaye conducted a radical formal change.[2] Documenting conflicts, political events or social issues, his pictures are made using large or medium format cameras, sometimes edited on computers and are shown in museums.[2] While exploring the boundaries between reality and the imaginary,[10] they constitute documents-monuments of immediate history,[11] and urge reflection "upon the relationships among art, history and information".[1]
