Bertrand Meunier. Ordinary countrymen > > June 21th... September 28th 2008 Opening: Friday June 20th 2008 at 7.00 pm

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1 > > Bertrand Meunier Ordinary countrymen June 21th... September 28th 2008 Opening: Friday June 20th 2008 at 7.00 pm

2 Musée Nicéphore Niépce 28 quai des messageries Chalon sur Saône + 33 (0) (0) fax contact@museeniepce.com Press Emmanuelle Vieillard communication.niepce@chalonsursaone.fr Visuals and press releases available on our web site Open every day except Tuesdays and holidays, am and pm July and August am... 6 pm Access By the A6, exit 25 Chalon Nord or 26 Chalon Sud SNCF train station in Chalon Close to the TGV station Le Creusot-Montchanin (20 min. from Chalon by car) Lyon-Saint-Exupéry Airport (an hour from Chalon by car) Entrance fee free entrance

3 Bertrand Meunier Ordinary countrymen At a time when all eyes are on Beijing for the Olympics and when the world is questioning the legitimacy of this choice, Bertrand Meunier proposes an unembroidered view of China where the peasant, once at the heart of the political system, no longer has a place. Fascination for the Middle Kingdom must not blot out the reality of a daily life that has changed profoundly since the reforms of the eighties. Rapid economic growth, and the changes implemented by the monolithic state have marginalised a part of the population and have created a serious imbalance; workers and employees have become poor, peasants have been uprooted, exploited in cities of unbridled urban development. Friday, June 20 th 2008, Press conference at 2.30 pm In the presence of the photographer Bertrand Meunier has been examining these social changes for almost ten years. He regularly returns to China in order to record the damage created by the country s economic development, damage that the central ruling power tries to hide one way or another. To begin with he explored the world of the worker and the industrial zones of the post-maoist world, and then, along with Pierre Haski the journalist, he contributed to reveal the contaminated blood scandal in China. With Paysans Ordinaires, with the support of the musée Nicéphore Niépce, he has chosen to examine the consequences for the peasant and rural world of China s entry into the WTO. The future of the farming world is at the heart of the Chinese question. It represents over 800 million souls. However, while it was at the origin of Mao s rise to power, the rural community was the big loser in the reforms lead by Deng Xiaoping with the aim of opening the People s Republic of China to modernisation, that is to say capitalism. Leaving the land which no longer gave them a living, and migrating to the rich cities in the East (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou ) in search of a better life, country people filled the ranks of the under-paid workers. Their disillusion was complete; their situation even more precarious. However, they are becoming more and more vocal, they are tired of being rejected by the urban world. This population now threatens the stability of the country; 10 to 12 million peasants leave the countryside each year. Bertrand Meunier travelled through the rural provinces of the Szechuan in the West (China s attic»), the coastal provinces south of Beijing, from where most of the migrants to the capital hail, but also the Henan and Shanxi regions, poverty-stricken areas in the north and centre of China. He went to meet peasants, he met ordinary and warm human beings. His reportage confirms the disappearance of ordinary farming, as both men and women are obliged at one point or another...

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5 ... to work in the factories or building sites in the cities. Bertrand Meunier paints a stark portrait of these Mingong, this floating population of worker-farmers. His photographs bear witness to a tough, desperate, daily life but they are not without sensitivity. The explanation is never immediate; the image questions, creates doubts. They show a world that is more complex than we think. A world that is not shown. Bertrand Meunier is a member of the Tendance Floue collective. He has won a number of awards : The Oscar Barnack Award in 2001, the Photo of the Year Award in the German magazine Die Tageszeitung in 2003, the International Media Award in 2005, the Niépce Award in 2007.

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