Richard Kalvar

Richard Kalvar was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1944. In 1965 he interrupted his literature studies, and with absolutely no knowledge of or interest in photography, managed to be hired as an assistant by French fashion photographer Jerome Ducrot. Clearly fashion was not for him, but he began taking pictures in the streets of New York with his boss's cameras, and was soon bitten by the photography bug. A ten-month hitch-hiking trip around western Europe the following year confirmed his vocation...See more

Richard Kalvar was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1944. In 1965 he interrupted his literature studies, and with absolutely no knowledge of or interest in photography, managed to be hired as an assistant by French fashion photographer Jerome Ducrot. Clearly fashion was not for him, but he began taking pictures in the streets of New York with his boss's cameras, and was soon bitten by the photography bug. A ten-month hitch-hiking trip around western Europe the following year confirmed his vocation. He moved to Paris in 1970, and helped found the Viva agency. In 1975 he joined Magnum Photos, and became a full member in 1977. He has served as president, and is currently vice-president of the Paris office. Kalvar has worked extensively for the media in the US, Europe and Asia, but considers himself less a photojournalist than an anti-photojournalist. He explores appearance and its tenuous and ambiguous relationship to reality. His images, always unposed, often ironic, play on a discrepancy between the banality of a real situation and a feeling of strangeness that emerges from a particular choice of timing and framing. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in 2007, accompanied by his book Earthlings (Flammarion). A Photo Poche and Photofile edited by Robert Delpire were published in 2018. Kalvar's most recent exhibition, La voce delle mani, opened at the Palazzo Callas, Sirmione, Italy in July 2022. See less