VietNamNet Bridge – It has been said that one picture can be worth 1,000 words. A new exhibition at the Ha Noi Arts College is offering over 1,000 words to tell the story of French pictures.

Tightrope: This photo by Georges Tairraz (1868-1924) shows a woman crossing a crevasse on Mont Blanc with the help of a ladder, is on display at the show.

“What photography reproduces to infinity can only occur at one moment: it repeats mechanically what can never repeat in real life”, Roland Barthes, a famous French philosopher (1915-80), once said. It is in this spirit that the public can understand the emotions captured and spread when in 1839, photography took off in Paris.

The photos on display were chosen among thousands of original photos preserved at the Paris National Museum, Orsay Museum and Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Visitors cannot only admire the work of famous photographers such as Nicephore Niepce, Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard, Gustave Gray, Charles Negres and Eugene Cuvelier, but also lesser known photographers such as Edouard Baldus and Charles Marville or famous amateur photographers such as Jacques Henri Lartigue and Count Robert de Montesquiou.

The exhibit will of course feature internationally recognisable photos that hold significance in the photographic history of France, and subsequently discover the stories behind these images.

Many will recognise a photo by Charles Negre (1820-80) that captured a bourgeois who posed on the exterior gallery of Notre Dame de Paris beside a gargoyle. The historic picture shows the contrast of one figure of skin and one of stone, with the 1853 skyline of Paris under their feet.

From the young and beautiful maid leaning out on a balcony in Paris like in an 18th century painting, or the image of a woman wearing a long dress and climbing the Mont Blanc while she crossed the crevasses in 1908, the show captures not only historical images but reflects the emotions of times gone by.

The show even dates back to the imperial, with a photo of Emperor Napoleon III watching attentively the mounting of his son on the pony Bouton d’Or in 1859. The three or four-year old boy seemed to be sitting upon a throne. The exhibition should be of particular interest to those looking to better understand the history of France at the time of the Paris Commune in 1871.

“This exhibition is very important for us, it is the result of extended co-operation of the French Cultural Centre with the college, and of the French people with the Vietnamese people,” says Hubert Olie, director of the Centre.

The exhibit will run until Sunday at the College. A discussion of the role of photography in the arts will be held at the college on Thursday, at 9.30am.

(Source: Viet Nam News)