West Meets East – Retrospective exhibition of Marc Riboud’s photography at the Hunan Museum
The Association Les amis de Marc Riboud is delighted to announce the opening of a major retrospective exhibition in China featuring 148 photographs by Marc Riboud on loan from the Guimet Museum. The exhibition will be held at the Hunan Museum from September 26 to December 10, 2024, and then at the Chengdu Art Museum from December 21, 2024 to March 20, 2025.
Bringing together all these journeys, from Paris to the Far East and around the world, the exhibition gives pride of place to China.
China has been Marc Riboud’s greatest passion. As soon as he became a photographer, he tried to obtain a visa for this country that he had always dreamed of. Finally, in 1957, he was to be immersed for the first time in the faces and landscapes of China’s countryside and big cities. There he walked for days and days, in silence. To see and observe, because for him, the only way to understand this people, who seemed so far from us, was to look at them.
In the course of his many journeys, a deep, silent bond developed with those he was looking at. This silent communication with the Chinese people was Marc Riboud’s greatest joy. He loved exhibiting in China and would have been delighted with this retrospective in Changsha and Chengdu, which shows once again that the Chinese are still sensitive to this respectful, sympathetic gaze, which seeks to understand, to discover the beauty of form in the disorder of reality, to patiently follow the evolution of a people over more than fifty years.
This exhibition is part of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and China. We would like to thank the French Institute of China for its support.
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Hunan Museum, N°50 Dongfeng Road, Kaifu District, Changsha
https://www.hnmuseum.com
Chengdu Art Museum, N°388 Jinniuba Road, Jinniu District, Chengdu
https://www.cdmuseum.com