The bilingual site devoted to the cultural life in Sri Lanka and in France                                                         Le site bilingue consacré à la vie culturelle au Sri Lanka et en France H O M E   /   I N  B R I E F CONTACT US TOPICALITY Sri Lanka / France CULTURE Cinema Dance Exhibition Heritage Literature Music Poetry Spirituality Travellers DOSSIERS Fascination of the body Paul Cézanne In the Light of Gauguin Globalization Jean de La Fontaine Languages Malraux / Segalen Picasso-Rodin Pigeon houses in Quercy Raphael Saint-Exupéry SOCIETY Abortion AIDS Death Penalty Mental Health GALLERY Raphael Miniatures of Kangra, India ARCHIVES Ceylon / August 1959 CHE GUEVARA PHOTOGRAPHER   Che Guevara photographe La Galerie photo Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle in Montpellier Till 21 September. Montpellier Website    Emblematic figure of the XXth Century, Ernesto Che Guevara was photographed by the greatest artists. He was himself a photographer, and what is less known, an asserted photographer. For the first time in France, his images that include some moving self-portraits are exhibited at the "Galerie Photo" in Montpellier. This exhibition of Che Guevara photographer, under the authority of Commissioner Josep Vicent Monzo, is organized with the collaboration of the Che Guevara Studies Center of la Havane.  At this occasion, a 200 pages catalogue reproduces all the photographs (Excluive sale at the "Librairie Sauramps" and the "Galerie Photo"). From 1959, he was an itinerant Embassador for Cuba, and continued to photograph the places he was travelling, in Africa or Asia, and notably in Ceylon in August 1959. Budas tallados en las rocas... ...en un templo del Sureste asiatico. Templos budistas, Sureste asiatico.   Ruinas en el sureste asiatico. Templos budistas, Sureste asiatico. Sureste asiatico.   Inde L'OMBRE DES GARES Texts and photographs by Bernard Lachaud Preface by Alain Corneau Editions France Delory Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay or Madras... "Everything started in this small city in Rajasthan in the North-West of India..." A very personal documentary that looks like revealing what others are still looking for : may be the result of a meditation, an alliance between text and image which goes beyond or below this multitude of faces that stay in the shadow. Anonymous, almost similar, indifferent and serene. So strangely distant from each other. Claire Gilly (Arts interactifs)   NOSTALGIA... William Baker and John Burke BOOK "From Kashmir to Kabul : The Photographs of Burke and Baker, 1860-1900" By Omar A. Khan, F.S. Aijazuddin (Preface) Prestel USA - ISBN : 3791327860 December 2002. From Kashmir to Kabul is the first book to piece together the remarkable careers of Baker and Burke. No photographers of the Raj era witnessed more wars, discoveries, new events and human diversity than did these two Irishmen. Samuel Bourne (1834-1912) 's India EXHIBITION "Samuel Bourne photographer in India (1863-1870)" Palazzo Fontana di Trevi (Roma) Recently Samuel Bourne Samuel Bourne's name is synonymous with British Indian photography. He is the most researched and highly-praised colonial photographer. Samuel Bourne exhibited his photographs of landscapes as soon as 1858 in India, where he spent six years and where he started his real career. In 1864, he opens, at Simla, a photographic studio, and in 1868, become associated with Charles Shepherd who takes the responsibility of the commercialization of the images, while Bourne is exploring and photographing the Indian sub-continent ; he realises more than three thousand plates. Bourne takes part into three expeditions in Himalaya (1863 to 1866), and, during these journeys, realises the first views of mountains at very high altitude (more than 6,000 metres). Bourne wrote a lively series on his adventures for The British Journal of Photography Emile Gsell (1838-1879) 's Indochina BOOK "Photographes en Indochine. Tonkin, Annan, Cochinchine, Cambodge et Laos au XIXe siècle" Philippe Franchini and Jérôme Ghesquière Marval / RMN / Musée Guimet Paris 2001.   In 1866, Emile Gsell (1838-1879) became the first professional photographer to settle in Saigon. He comes back to Cambodia in 1873 and photographs Tonkin in 1876. This beautiful album, which includes the contents of the French public collections, reserves for Emile Gsell a particular place in the world of photography. Emile Gsell Cho Cao canal construction, c. 1875. Earth Architecture : Mosques in Mali Sebastian Schutyser Recently. Maison Européenne de la Photographie 5/7 rue de Fourcy Paris IV Saint-Paul 01 44 78 75 01 Sculpture or architecture ? Our astonished yes find difficult to conclude in front of the strange beauty of these buildings. Stupefaction when we face these earth mosques, with their strong and fine shape, which have been built, in the middle of the desert of Mali, neither by the architects, nor by the sculptors, but by some village craftsmen. These constructions, with their cracked walls, are the real products of the surrounding arid earth, and represent some kind of miracle.     Nevertheless, they represent the work of men who actualize an ancestral practice of the clay and relief and perpetuate, with inventiveness, a gesture and a know-how which has been transmitted through generations. Indeed, it is not a popular culture that is over, but a still alive expression : the majority of these mosques have been either built or modified during the XXth Century. The photographic work of Sebastian Schutyser allows, with modesty and precision, to reveal the unchanging beauty of these constructions. Source : Anna Rosen Faces Agence Vu Exhibition hold in November 2001 17, Bd Henri IV - 75004 Paris - Tel. : (33) 01 53 01 85 85. Hien Lam Duc, photographer (Agence Vu) and Régine Deforges writer, and President of the Association "Enfants du Monde - Droits de l'Enfant", have decided to put together their talent and their enthousiasm in order to support the actions of this Association which fights for the recognition of the child as a person. Vietnam, Kosovo, Algeria, Guinée, Irak, Columbia and Afghanistan.... Faces of children who never smile, of adolescents who already have an adult look and who seem to be puzzeled because resuming their dignity is not apprehensible since they are living under such difficult conditions. "Because the essential is them, boy or girl, the little individual who is going to be, in the moment where the snapshot is taken, the only "object", transformed into a "subject", of an image which does not relate any anecdote but confronts us, eye to eye, individual to individual, to what we are or to what we do not succeed to be... Here, there are no games, no help from tears, no anecdotes or contextualization as a kind of justification, but only the faces. And if you do not feel concerned, it is your problem...." Christian Caujolle Artistic Director (Agence Vu)   Marseille in the time of Nadar Musée du Vieux-Marseille Recently Nadar, the first great portraitist in the history of photography, lived in Marseille at the turn of the XXth century. At 77, in 1897, Nadar, this great traveller seduced by the city of Marseille, settles there by founding a studio. The studio of the great photographer, who was also a journalist, writer, caricaturist and aeronaut, has been reconstituted there with all his cameras and works. Nadar, selfportrait From 1850 to 1910, the exhibition retraces the history of Marseille and a period of the history of photography that, during these years, realised some considerable technical progresses, from the daguerrotype to the industrialization of the portraits in studio. Then Marseille welcomes some fifty photographers who took pictures of the 25th centennial of the city in 1899, the construction of the transbordeur bridge in 1905 and the Colonial Exhibition in 1906. Nadar takes there the first photographic account under water : "The works under the sea", at the Cape Pinède. In 1904, he left Marseille for Paris, his home town. FÉLIX TOURNACHON (1820-1910) statedly Nadar   In 1854, he started to publish the Panthéon Nadar. This periodic portrait album of contemporary personalities strikes us with an extraordinary vitality which flows out despite the "poses" of the models and witnesses Nadar's artistic honesty which is similar to his instinct to choose the best expression for each face... At that period, the models posed very stiff, without winking, in front of the painted backgrounds. In that way, Nadar seized Frédéric Mistral, Lumière brothers and Louis Pasteur. Even today, his effigies of Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Victor Hugo remain unrivalled. Then Nadar gets enthousiastic for the balloons ; in 1858, he deposits a "patent for a new system of an aerostatic photography" and, the same year, he takes his first snapshot, from a balloon above Petit-Clamart. Being closely linked to the world of art and drama, he lends his atelier to the Impressionists for their first two exhibitions in 1874 and 1887. It is thanks to him, more than to the "photographes d'art" who disdained him, that the photography won its autonomy as a mean of aesthetic research. From up : Charles Baudelaire, George Sand, Eugène Delacroix. By Nadar. The prestigious prize "Prix Nadar" awarded to "Le Livre des tempêtes", The "Prix Nadar 2001" - known as the "Goncourt of Photography" - has been attributed to "Le Livre des tempêtes, à bord de l'Abeille Flandre" Photographs : Jean Gaumy - Text : Hervé Hamon, Editions du Seuil, 40,85 €.   Read also : Fascination of Body - Lionel Wendt, Jeanloup Sieff and Antoine Bourdelle. Kandy Alliance Photo 2003.