He has been taking pictures for 40 years, but his first book was just released in France. A little jewel, featuring black and white pictures, summarizing multiple trips throughout the United States, except Hawaii. It is the work of a passionate poet.

It is the end of the 60’s, a time when the great myth of the American “beat generation” arrived in Europe: travels, poetry, adventure. François went traveling in Morocco, then in Egypt, and finally India. India, he went, returned, then returned again. For his third trip, while trying his hand at a career in war photojournalism, he was headed for the Indian-Pakistani border – he met Nancy Gury Duncan in Calcutta. She had a journalism degree from Columbia University and was traveling in Asia. In a very moving postface, Nancy tells the story of how they met, the already dented Pentax, belonging to François, and the brand new Nikon, that of the pretty blonde American girl.

François Le Diascorn was born in France on January 10, 1947, his father a professor from Brittany and his mother from the south of France. For the Le Diascorn family, photography was not highly regarded: he had to go to college. François has a degree in political science and a master’s in law.

In 1972, he met up with his sweetheart in Portland, Oregon, worked for an American television station, then left for Mexico and Central America before returning to France. He found work in the advertising department of Procter & Gamble, but was “very unhappy”. He returned to the states to celebrate the American bicentennial.

In 1978, he was recognized by the small Viva agency – founded five years earlier by Martine Franck, Hervé Gloaguen, Jean Lattès, Guy Le Querrec, Claude Dityvon, François Hers and Alain Dagbert – at the time that Martine Franck and Guy Le Querrec had left for Magnum. It was already the beginning of the end, this “collective” before its time, would suffer an extended agony, but is today recognized for its avant-garde role in French photography.

“In 1982, I was awarded a one year grant for “Foreign work and research”. A beautiful grant! We bought a trailer and Nancy and I traveled throughout the United States. The only state we missed was Hawaii, but all the others… all the way to Alaska.” Says François Le Diascorn.

He left the Viva agency in 1986 for Rapho and received several prizes and grants for his work, among them the Angénieux prize – already – for “America Unusual”, a World Press Photo award for his work on the renovation of the Zoology Gallery in Paris. His pictures have been shown in numerous museums and galleries around Europe and the United States and are part of several collections including that of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Cartier Foundation, the Centre des Arts Plastiques, the Pomidou Center, etc.

Untiring, François Le Diascorn seeks the how and why of those he observes in a far more poetic way than photojournalistic. As such, he comments in the introduction to his book, this book does not show pictures of America, but pictures taken in America.

An eternal vagabond, with a back pack, he is still on a solitary quest. He is currently working on a major project about the religions of the world. “Recently, in Greece, while sleeping on a platform, I looked around. There were only young people around me. I wondered what they could possibly be thinking about the old drifter I still am. I still work the same way, frugally” he commented at the exhibition “Only in America” during the Visa pour l’Image 2009 Festival, prior to the book’s release.

“What I’ve always loved about the US, is taking pictures of a strange America. During the 70’s, it was still rural, laid back, pleasant, if a bit stubborn, where you couldn’t find a good restaurant. Today, wine and good food have penetrated the country. Before September 11, I never had a problem taking pictures of people, in any situation, save for the Indians perhaps… There was no suspicion, Americans were proud. But in January, 2009, in Washington, for President Obama’s inauguration, for the first time, people refused to be photographed. That moved me.”

It isn’t only in America that paranoia has threatened photographers. In France, this winter, François Le Diascorn was aggressed while taking a picture of … a Parisian hair salon!

The increase of this type of incident, between the photographers and their subjects, in addition to the financial troubles confronted by the press and publishing world gives this book a taste of nostalgia for people pictures “on the road”.
Michel Puech

Only in America François Le Diascorn, Nancy Gury Duncan. Publisher Creaphis