"It's the first time he has had a big photo exhibition like this," Corinne de Conti, director of the roof of the Grande Arche de La Défense (west of Paris), explains to AFP. works that "deserve greatness".
Entitled "Hymn to Beauty", this presentation brings together scenes of life and landscapes photographed in different places in the world -Iceland, Nepal, Pacific Ocean, Patagonia-- and highlights a conception of beauty that Matthieu Ricard shares under four aspects: the human, the spiritual, the altruism and the nature.
Pictures testifying to an "ultimate beauty, which we remember, which pervades us" and which served as a selection criterion for bringing together these 151 works, according to Corinne de Conti.
This exhibition is also a way for Matthieu Ricard, defender of animal and ecological causes, to encourage "to act to face the greatest and most urgent challenge of the 21st century, that of the environmental crisis", he explained to the AFP.
In harmony with its Buddhist values, the exhibition invites visitors to sit on large poufs placed on the ground in the middle of the gallery, close to a label inviting them to "relax, breathe and meditate".
It also presents personalities who have marked her career, such as Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoché, former grand master of Tibetan Buddhism, and Drouk-kar Tsho, a young Tibetan woman whose face has become the symbol of the Karuna-Shechen association.
The latter, founded by Matthieu Ricard, implements humanitarian projects in Nepal, Tibet and India.
© 2022 AFP