Curator: Lorène Durret

Organisers: Gregor Beltzig, Teona Gogichaishvili

Marc was enthusiastic, fervent, he loved to love, and occasionally he fell in love with the countries which he visited. Not all of them of course. But some. China obviously, but also Angkor, Naples and later Georgia which was a real “coup de cœur” for him. 

This love affair with Georgia began with music because we had the opportunity of meeting the marvellous Quatuor of Tbilissi on their first European tour in 1991. Marc had been deeply moved by their playing, by their generosity, and by the courage their country displayed liberating themselves from the Soviet stranglehold.

After the concert, we both realized that we had to see these four musicians again and this desire brought us to Tbilissi in the spring of 1992, just barely a year after the Georgian declaration of independence. 

The country was still struggling and the daily life was difficult, but the Georgians we met did not seem to be preoccupied by the lack of food nor by the heating which was very problematic. They savoured their new-found liberty and spoke about the things that have always been important to them: music, poetry, singing a capella in the churches, the marionette theatre, the beauty of the calligraphy of their alphabet which dates back over a thousand-year…

On our first day, we were strolling through the market when a young Georgian came up to us and began to recite to me in French, without the least accent, verses by Baudelaire. I don’t remember which ones but I do remember Marc’s astonishment. He was completely charmed. It was difficult to imagine this happening in a Paris market! 

Day after day, we walked through all the neighbourhoods, visiting old dilapidated palaces where former princes and princesses had become violin makers or potters… We also understood why the rich sultans came to steal the beautiful Georgian women for their harems. The women we saw in the streets were, indeed, beautiful. We saw that the mosque, the synagogue and the Orthodox church were close by one another in the center, reminding us that Georgia is a country where the Orient and the Occident have always mixed and where the three religions live together in peace. 

This exhibition gives Georgia its place among the countries loved by Marc Riboud. It also allows us to follow the photographer for almost 50 years. We first discover the young provincial man dazzled by the Eiffel Tower and the Paris of the early 1950’s. Then, in 1957, we follow the impatient man anxious to leave who drove away in the old Land Rover given to him by George Rodgers. His route stretched from Beirut to Calcutta, crossing Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. The beauty he discovered there marked him forever, but the selected images show also how his interest for Europe, its political struggles, its student rebellions both in the East and the West never waned. Finally this retrospective gives to China, a country that Marc never ceased returning to (1957-2010), a central place, like the one it occupied in his life. 

A retrospective is a voyage in space but above all in time. The permanences through ages, the resemblances between countries at different periods, the unsuspected relationships, the spectacular transformations are engraved into the films. Marc had the chance to be able to practise his passion for half a century and his photographs capture for us the passage of time. They also tell us how he saw - with empathy and respect, with a certain distance too that allowed him to compose his images, so as to out the superfluous and give them this force, and this beauty, that are theirs. 

Those three weeks spent in Georgia had been for Marc a moment of uninterrupted joy. He would have been truly thrilled to see his photographs exhibited today in this city which he loved and where he made true friends.

Catherine Riboud