Art & Culture Report :
On the centenary of the First World War, a photo exhibition titled ‘War and Colonies, 1914-1918’ is being held at the La Galerie of the Alliance Francaise de Dhaka (AFD).
AFD is organising the exhibition to tribute to the colonial troops engaged on both sides of the conflict.
Michel Trinquier, the French Ambassador to Bangladesh, inaugurated the exhibition as chief guest on February 24, while Dr Ferdinand Von Weyhe, Deputy Head of Mission of the German Embassy in Dhaka and KH Masud Siddiqui, Secretary of the Liberation War Ministry of Bangladesh, were present as special guest and guest of honour respectively on the occasion.
The exhibition, although featuring just 35 photographs, is an enriched display, featuring brilliant textual references, statistics and historical facts interspersed throughout the gallery.
Beginning with the Indian troops and the follower ranks of the Indian Army, the exhibition displays photos and information on Irish troops, Africans deployed in the European colonial armies – the Askaris, French colonial troops – Annamese and Senegalese and Moroccan soldiers and infantrymen.
The photos – although presumably taken for documentation and not from a photographic aesthetics perspective – are striking.
In the exhibition, some photographs show them in non-combat activities such as trench-digging, repairing roads, even wounded soldiers working in the kitchens, some show more frontline activities like gun-training and cleaning, or even in combat.
Apart from them are a few that show life went on amid the war, with one showing a soldier grinding coffee with a bottle or a shell, and a delightful snap of Senegalese infantrymen doing a tribal dance, with one man jumping mid-air while spectators form a circle around.
Meanwhile, the exhibition – and an international conference on the same title that took place from February 25 to 26 at the Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Building of the Dhaka University.
Institut-Francais (Fonds d’Alembert for the exchange of ideas) the French Embassy in Bangladesh, the Mission du Centenaire, Dhaka University, Liberation War Affairs ministry, ECPAD and Omni Books are partners to the event, sponsored by Monagut French Fashion Knitting and GETCO.
The exhibition will continue till March 9 at the AFD and from March 11 to 18 at the Liberation War Museum in the city. n
