Gérard Rancinan

Gérard Rancinan is a French photographer whose work has appeared in publications such as Sports Illustrated, Time, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, and Paris Match.

Gérard Rancinan started his career as an apprentice in the laboratory of the photo department of the Bordeaux daily newspaper, Sud Ouest.

After three years as an apprentice, he became the youngest photojournalist in France at the age of 18 and began covering local news.

When he was 21, he was sent to the newspaper's agency in Pau.

Having been spotted by the newly founded press agency, Sygma, in 1973, Rancinan decided to sign a distribution contract with the firm.

Five years later he became a Sygma staff photographer in Paris.

He covered current events around the world - earthquakes in Algeria to political upheaval in Poland, war in Lebanon, riots in England; sporting events (Olympic Games, Football World Cups, World Athletics Championships); movie shoots (Ran by Akira Kurosawa, Betty Blue by Jean-Jacques Beineix, The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci); show business, fashion and the cinema.

Since 1984, Rancinan has also worked on a regular basis with Sports Illustrated.

In his projects, he collaborates with writers, journalists, thinkers, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers (Caroline Gaudriault, Virginie Luc, Paul Virilio, Francis Fukuyama etc.).

He left Sygma in 1986 to set up his own agency, before once again becoming independent in 1989.

His portraits of leading personalities (Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II, François Mitterrand, Monica Bellucci, Tiger Woods, Yasser Arafat, Bill Gates, etc.) and his photographic "sagas" describing major societal developments have been published on the front pages of magazines Paris Match, Life, Stern, The Sunday Times Magazine.

In the 1990s, Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr produced Rancinan's exhibition Urban Jungle at the Espace Cardin in Paris in 2000.

Rancinan's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art: "Portrait of Nathalie", Triennale di Milano: "Portraits of Cardinals", Palais de Tokyo Muséum, Paris: "Metamorphoses") "Trilogy of the Moderns", Triennale di Milano - Contemporary Art Museum, Italie.

and is held in private contemporary art collections.

At an auction at the Étude Million at the l'Hôtel Drouot in 2008, his work sold at a price comparable with the upper echelons of French contemporary art photographers.

His photograph, "Batman Girls", sold for a record price in London in May 2012 at the auction house, Philip de Pury.

On 7 January 2013 Laurent Fabius, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, invited Rancinan to display, in one of the rooms of the Quai d'Orsay his photograph "Batman Boys", promoting the work of contemporary French artists abroad.

The sale of Rancinan's "The Feast of the Barbarians" by the Étude Pillon in Versailles on 18 May 2014 – achieved the highest price of any living French photographer.

Rancinan photographs his contemporaries and analyses the behaviours and beliefs characterizing modern societies.

Rancinan's photographs are studied in schools in France within the framework of the National Diploma (DNB) in the History of Art.