Anne de Henning’s rare photos of Bangladesh’s birth, Bangabandhu to have Dhaka exhibit 15-24 Dec
Samdani Art Foundation and Centre for Research and Information (CRI) will hold an exhibition of renowned photographer Anne de Henning's never-seen-before series on Liberation War and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Set to be inaugurated Thursday, the exhibition titled 'Witnessing History in the Making: Photographs by Anne de Henning', will be open for visitors at Dhaka's Liberation War Museum till 24 December, said a press release.
The presence of Anne de Henning and a tour by the French photographer through her exhibition will remain a special addition.
Already earned global acclamations and featured in leading global outlets, this exhibition drew full praise from international audiences when exhibited in France earlier. "So intense and so fragile", is how Forbes magazine reviewed this exhibition.
Scouring through the country during the Liberation War, her photographs captured life in the war zone – from freedom fighters to men, women and children boarding refugee trains and fleeing from their villages.
On her second visit to the country, Anne's photographs from 1972 feature Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who, all his life, worked to decolonise the nation from British and Pakistani rule and move towards democracy and freedom. Images of Mujib were systematically destroyed after the coup of 1975 and Anne's surviving colour photographs are among the few known to still exist.
"There's a leader from the subcontinent who led his country to independence based on very progressive ideals of a secular, equal country for all," said Radwan Mujib Siddiq, grandson of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and trustee of CRI, expressing his views about the photographs.
"The whole of Bangladesh got behind him, they fought a war against all odds, and Bangladesh emerged independent," he said.