Your Royal Highness, Your Excellency, sirs Dignitaries, sirs Organizers and you dear Public.
I wish to share with you the emotion I feel, this evening, facing you and being among you.
A deep, powerful emotion coming from exalting memories which I keep of your region and of
your great hospitality.
I feel specially honoured by the presence of His Royal Highness Prince Michal Bin Abdallah Bin
Abdul Aziz, Emir of Najran and by the presence of His Excellency Doctor Abdul Aziz Khojia,
Minister of Culture.
I am particularly impressed and moved to return on this land ... to come back to " true friends ".
May I dare to say “I feel to be back home ...”.
Many things change in Najran since 36 years but one thing did not change at all, it is the kindness
and the generosity of its people.
It is with gratitude that I answer to the invitation of the " Najran Literary and Cultural Club " to
participate to the “Ghis Bin Saaeda Festival”; And I thank the Festival President Mr. Saleh Sedran
to give me the possibility to show my work and to give to everybody the chance to see this
magnificent heritage sealed in time with all these photos.
It is in 1978 that the chance was given to me to enter the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia, invited by the Government. Among several other cities I visited in that time, Najran
enchanted and seduce me for its beauty, its grace and more than anything else for the charming
hospitality of its inhabitants.
The felix Arabia of my children dreams was coming true ... here in Najran.
Prince Fahd Ibn Khaled El Sedayri, Emir of Najran in 1982 and Sheikh Ali Bin Mussallam supported
me very actively for preparing a book.
During two years, with Patricia Massari, I visited and photographs extensively the all region.
Then in Paris during 2 more years we edited and published the book, which many of you remember:
“Najran, desert garden of Arabia” ... followed by numerous photo exhibitions.
Then, convinced that these photos represented a unique heritage I spend several more years to
transform these thousands of pictures into a digital photos library compatible with all the new
technologies. It took me 15 more years to do it and now every photo is coded, key worded and
captioned and can be immediately found on a computer. Now they are all protected and perpetuate
forever ...
Why did I make all this ? ... to be frank : First I like my photos and I did not want to let them sleep in
files. Second and the most important, I am firmly convinced that these photos are part of the heritage
of the Saudi people ... your heritage ... and that they will be useful and precious some day anyway;
By making this work, I feel to be the servant of a bigger cause, a trans-generational transmission.
I deeply thank with all my heart all the Najrani people. In particular I also would like to express my
gratitude to Atran Al Atran my faithful guide and friend who accompany me everywhere and help me
so much ... He left us accidentally, too early to appreciate his work, he never saw the book ...
I also wish to thank many other precious Najrani friends, but the list is too long to named all of them ...
Without all these people I would not have done such beautiful work ...
I come with a slide show made of nearly 800 photos that you can see on several big screens settled
under a Bedouin tent, symbol of the tradition and the modernity. These photos will remind many
souvenirs to some of you and for the young generation it will show them some of their heritage and
the pride of their ancestry.
I will never forget this meeting with Najran and the Najrani. Years spent in Najran matter among the
most beautiful and the most significant of my life.
I hope and I wish that you'll love these slide-shows as much as I do. On top of my personal feeling,
I have put all my professional knowledge and mastering into it. So please, come and share with me
your feelings and your memories. I'll be here during the whole festival and I 'll be more than happy
to talk with you and to meet the young generation.
Again, many many thanks to all of you,
Chokran gesillah ...
