Richard Kalvar

Richard Kalvar, born in 1944, is American. After studying English and American literature at Cornell University from 1961 to 1965, he worked in New York as an assistant to fashion photographer Jérôme Ducrot. It was an extended trip with a camera in Europe in 1966 that made him decide to become a photographer. After another two years in New York, he settled in Paris and first joined Vu Photo Agency, before helping to found the Viva agency in 1972. In 1975, he became an associate member of Magnum Photos and two years later a full member, subsequently serving as vice-president and president.

In 1980, Kalvar had a solo show at the Agathe Gaillard gallery in Paris, and has since participated in many group shows. He published Portrait de Conflans Sainte-Honorine in 1993. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 2007, accompanied by a book, Earthlings. In 2019, his Photofile book was published by Thames & Hudson, and in 2023 Selected Writings was published by Damiani. He has carried out extensive personal, editorial and commercial assignments throughout the world, notably in France, Italy, England, Japan and the United States, and continues to work on a long-term project on the city of Rome.

Kalvar’s photographs are marked by a strong homogeneity of aesthetic and theme. His images frequently 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. The result is a state of tension between two levels of interpretation, attenuated by a touch of humor.