Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and First Second Books are pleased to present a unique exhibit featuring photos and illustrations from the graphic novel THE PHOTOGRAPHER. In 1986, photojournalist Didier Lefèvre documented a clandestine cross-border humanitarian mission undertaken by a Doctors Without Borders team to assist Afghans stranded without medical care in areas hardest-hit by the Soviet invasion. This one mission was part of a massive humanitarian aid effort launched by Doctors Without Borders in the months following the 1979 Soviet occupation. Dodging Soviet aircraft and navigating treacherous terrain, Lefèvre’s journey nearly cost him his own life. Over a decade later, he collaborated with acclaimed illustrator Emmanuel Guibert to bring this story to life in THE PHOTOGRAPHER, a work translated into eleven languages. This exhibit offers a glimpse into the book through Lefèvre’s dramatic images and Guibert’s stunning artwork, and bears witness to the atrocities and suffering the Afghan people endured—and still endure today.
Please join us for an opening reception Thursday, April 23 at 6:00 PM at VII Gallery.
The exhibit and reception are free, open to the public, and wheel-chair accessible.
In 2005, five world-renowned photographers from the VII Photo Agency—Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged, and James Nachtwey—traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), to shed light on the suffering of the Congolese people in their struggle to survive a war that remains virtually invisible to the outside world.
Their work was presented in Democratic Republic of the Congo: Forgotten War, an exhibit curated by Alison Morley of the International Center for Photography. The exhibit premiered at Engine 27 in New York City and went on to travel within the US and to Australia, Austria, Canada, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, and Switzerland.
Following the assassination of five of its aid workers in June 2004, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) closed all of its medical programs in Afghanistan. MSF has assembled a selection of documentary photographs spanning 20 years of its 24-year history in Afghanistan that bear witness to the ongoing suffering of the Afghan people. The exhibition is a powerful visual record of providing humanitarian aid in times of war: from the Soviet occupation of 1979-1989, the ensuing mujahadeen wars, the rise of the Taliban, to the US-led military intervention in 2001 and its aftermath.
The exhibition premiered at New York's 92nd Street Y in October 2004, and has appeared in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Nashville.
MSF's Expo was an interactive exhibit that personalized the experience of living in a developing country with an infectious disease. Between March 2002 and May 2003, MSF took an interactive travelling exhibit to over 30 cities in 20 states across the U.S. to help raise awareness about the access crisis.
In 1993, this exhibit of drawings by Bosnian and Croatian children caught in conflict appeared at the Pompidou Center in Paris. In 1998 and 1999, it appeared in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, bearing witness to the traumatic impact of war on children. Journalist John Hockenberry and actress Kathleen Chalfant joined MSF at its New York opening in Soho's Puffin Room.
