For three decades, Stanley Greene has travelled the five continents to bear witness: wars and conflicts, famine and destruction are at the heart of this American photographer’s work. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to Hurrican Katrina, from war-torn Afghanistan to Chechenya, Stanley Greene documents the world’s big events, his reportage makes no concessions and places the photographer at the centre of the narrative.
In 2013, the musée Nicéphore Niépce and the photographer, represented by Noor Agency, signed a partnership agreement that is unprecedented between an artist, a press agency and a public institution. The photograher’s archives, whether donated or on loan to the museum will be highlighted and developed, the museum commits to a series of inventories, digitisation and exhibitions of the collection.
This, the first exhibition « Sur la route d'une guerre » (On the road to a war), presents shots taken in Chechenya between 1994 and 1996.

« My photographs of this conflict are not about technique or ‘art.’ They are the product of pure gut feeling. (…) My anger is total. »
Stanley Greene

The musée Nicéphore Niépce now houses an important collection of photographs by Stanley Greene (b. New York, 1949). Greene is one of the rare representatives of investigative photo-journalism working today. His reportage work shows his commitment, independence and his need to bear witness and convince. He is an ex-Black Panther and works mainly in modern warzones, getting involved in conflict that is usually ignored by the Western press.
This was the case in Chechnya. The invasion of this young independence-seeking republic by the Russian army in 1994 that was supposed to be a lightning operation, turned into a long-term horror story. Never, since the Second World War had a capital city – Grozny – been razed to the ground and an entire people massacred. Stanley Greene travelled through this hell from 1994 to 2003. His photographs denounce a one-sided conflict: the immense Russia against the tiny Chechnya, a total war carried out for a postage-stamp to make this Muslim population pay for its two-century old resistance.

Courtesy Noor Agency, Amsterdam