When French photographer Anne de Henning was visually documenting wartime stories of Bangladesh in 1971, a youth urged her to let the world know about the atrocities committed by the Pakistan army.
The acclaimed photographer, now 76, went back to her 25-year-old self while talking to journalists at the exhibition “Witnessing History in the Making: Photographs by Anne de Henning”.
Samdani Art Foundation and Centre for Research and Information (CRI) jointly organized the event at Liberation War Museum. The exhibition opened on Friday.
"Back in 1971, when I was capturing the stories of Bangladesh, a youth narrated how innocent people were being murdered and requested me to let the world hear about it," she told journalists as she was revisiting Bangladesh after 50 long years.
UNBOverjoyed at seeing happy faces on Victory Day, as opposed to the bleak days of the Liberation War, she said it was a momentous occasion to visit Dhaka on a day when the nation is celebrating victory and the red and green flags are flying all over the city. She will also take a tour of some of the places she visited during the 1971 war.
Reflecting on the role of female photographers and journalists in covering wartime stories, she said female journalists played an equally important part as their male counterparts. There was no difference except for the fact that women were fewer in number.
Anne de Henning was among a few foreign journalists who traveled through Bangladesh during the war, evading the eyes of the Pakistan army, which had deported foreign newsmen and photographers.
Her photographs ranged from refuge-seeking distressed father and son to freedom fighters standing in front of a camp to a house shelled by a Pakistani Sabre jet.
Henning also visited independent Bangladesh in 1972 when she captured the colour pictures of the Father of the Nation, whose leadership navigated Bangladesh towards freedom.
The colour photos of Bangabandhu she had captured and curated are among few surviving ones as most of his pictures were destroyed following his 1975 assassination and the subsequent military takeover.
