Richard Gere opens exhibition in Brussels

2 June 2005

BRUSSELS – US film star Richard Gere has agreed to let a small Brussels gallery show his campaigning photography to the public.

On Wednesday, the actor opened the exhibition, titled Pilgrim, at the Young Gallery in Uccle.

Gallery owner Pascal Young told the press securing the show was “a piece of luck”. When the American portrait photographer Greg Gorman exhibited at the gallery last year, Young asked him to contact Gere on his behalf.

A few days later, Gere agreed to talk to Gorman and he accepted the invitation to show in Brussels. The photos have been on show in Moscow, Cahors (in France) and in Milan, but they haven’t yet been to a big gallery in London or Paris.

The show is made up of 64 black and white photographs which Gere has taken over the course of 20 years of trips to Tibet. The actor says his work highlights the plight of a people who have been persecuted by the Chinese since 1950 when the country invaded.

Gere, who is now considered a persona non grata in Tibet, used his visit to Brussels to urge the European Union to name a special coordinator for Tibet. “If the US worked together with the European Union, that would put enormous pressure on China.”

The 55-year-old actor said he had “taken the way of Buddhism 29 years ago” and spent a lot of his free time campaigning for Tibetan independence. A part of the sales from his photography will go to the Gere Foundation, which funds charities which fight the spread of AIDS, defend human rights and protect culture.

The exhibition runs from 7 June until 15 September.

Subject: Belgian news