Jean Claude Delmas

Jean-Claude Delmas was born in 1943 in Dijon. He studied "as a dilettante" at the Lycée Carnot in Dijon He enlisted in the French Navy then after a few years returned to his hometown.

Passionate about photography, he made his first photo report at the age of eighteen with an Edixa-Mat camera fitted with a 50 m / m objective during the Bizerte crisis in Tunisia in July 1961 , during the war of Algeria.

In 1964 Jean-Claude Delmas began his career as a professional journalist as a reporter-photographer for the daily Les Dépêches de Côte-d'Or in Dijon for whom he covered Dijon and regional news for ten years then he worked for Agence France Press and the Reuters agency from 1974 to 1990.

He covered the funeral of General de Gaulle in 1970, the hostage-taking in 1971 by Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems at the Clairvaux power station , the Lip 4 affair, the shooting between winegrowers and CRS in Montredon-des-Corbières in March 1976 3, the Grégory affair , the electoral campaigns of Jacques Chirac 6, the trips of Pope John Paul II , the presidential campaign of François Mitterrand in 1981 8 , as well as the major sporting events, the Summer and Olympic Games. winter , Football World Cup , Cycling Tour de France , Rugby World Cup and Five Nations Tournaments , Gymnastics World Championships .

His photo of Jacques Chirac jumping over a turnstile in the Paris metro , at the Aubert metro station , during an election campaign in December 1980 has become iconic.

Passionate about jazz , Jean-Claude Delmas travels the major European festivals from Montreux to Marciac via Nice and Antibes Juan-les-Pins , and photographs all the musicians of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century , from Duke Ellington to Oscar Peterson , from Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis , from Gerry Mulligan , Stan Getz to Sonny Rollins , from Julian Cannonball Adderley to Phil Woods , from Stéphane Grappelli to Bireli Lagrène and Dee Dee Bridgewater 13.

Jean-Claude Delmas lives on Reunion Island where he retired