Solo photography exhibition by Marc Riboud begins at AFD

A eighteen-day solo photography exhibition titled ‘Bangladesh 1971: Mourning and Morning’ by Marc Riboud has begun at La Galerie of Alliance Française de Dhaka, Dhanmondi in the capital.

The inaugural ceremony of the exhibition was held on Friday on the gallery premises. Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni attended the inaugural ceremony of the exhibition as chief guest on Friday, while Dr Bernd Spanier, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Delegation of the European Union to Bangladesh and Guillaume Audren de Kerdrel, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Embassy of France in Bangladesh were present as the special guests.

Supported by L’association Les amis de Marc Riboud, and Musée Guimet; it is a unique exhibition of some powerful photographs taken during the Bangladesh liberation war.

One of the first generation of Magnum photographers, French veteran photographer Marc Riboud was born in Saint-Genis-Laval, near Lyon, in 1923. He shot his first photographs at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1937, using a tiny Vest Pocket Kodak given to him by his father for his 14th birthday. In 1944, he joined the Vercors resistance. From 1945 to 1948, he studied engineering at Lyon’s Ecole Centrale and began working. Three years later, he chose to pursue a career as a photographer.

His photo of a painter atop the Eiffel Tower was published in Life magazine in 1953. This was his first published work. Afterwards, he joined the Magnum Photos agency after being invited by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa.

He travelled by road from the Middle East and Afghanistan to India in 1955, where he remained for a year. In 1957, he travelled from Calcutta to Beijing for the first of many extended stays.

Bangladesh’s independence struggle piqued his attention, and he arrived in Kolkata in late November 1971. He journeyed inside the refugee camps and liberated zones. His expedition began at Sherpur, and after crossing the mighty Brahmaputra river, he witnessed the decisive battle of Jamalpur, which he extensively documented. The majority of these are still unpublished to this day. When the all-out Indo-Pakistan war broke out on 3 December, he entered Bangladesh with an advancing Indian army backed up by Bangladeshi freedom fighters. He was one of the first photographers to enter Dhaka and capture the city’s liberation with his camera.

Marc Riboud donated 192 original prints produced between 1953 and 1977 to the National Museum of Modern Art (Centre Georges Pompidou) in Paris in 2011. His art has received many prestigious honours and has been shown in museums and galleries in Paris, New York, Shanghai, and Tokyo, among other places.

Marc Riboud passed away in Paris in 2016 at the age of 93. The majority of his archives were given to the National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet in Paris.

The exhibition will be open to all from Monday to Saturday from 3 pm to 9 pm until October 21.Closed on Sunday.