Swaddling a child in her arms, listening intently to an old man on a stone bench or beaming her beautiful smile with hands folded in greeting, Mother Teresa dominates every inch of a small gallery room.
Swaddling a child in her arms, listening intently to an old man on a stone bench or beaming her beautiful smile with hands folded in greeting, her head slightly inclined, Mother Teresa dominates every inch of a small gallery room here.
From her early days in Skopje in present day Macedonia where she was born to parents of Albanian ancestry to her experiences in the Missionaries of Charity, various aspects of the Mother's life captured in photographs are part of a nine day exhibition that opened here last evening.
To commemorate her 100th birth anniversary, the exhibition organised by UNESCO contains 40 photographs of the Mother shot by ace lensman Raghu Rai as well as pictures and portraits of the nun collated by the Missionaries of Charity and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India.
Chief minister Shiela Dikshit who inaugurated the exhibition 'Mother Teresa -- A Life Dedicated' said, "Mother was somebody who was extra extra ordinary."
Recalling her meeting with the Mother just after she got married Dikshit said, "We were young and just started working with the NGO sector. Mother said if you really want to work with the poor you will find many people who need your kind words and help..."
Dikshit adds, "She was a living goddess. Her face was wrinkled and creased even at that time that I just felt like kissing her."
Born Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu to parents of Albanian ancestry in Skopje in present day Macedonia she left home at the age of 18 to enter the Loreto sisters in Dublin Ireland.
On January 6 1929, she arrived in Kolkata, later took to teaching at the St Mary's school there before leaving to answer her "calling within a calling" the service of the poorest of the poor in 1946.
Raghu Rai who spent time observing the Mother go about her daily duties capturing the moments on lens said," One of my editors discovered her in the 1970's when she was hardly known.
I landed in her small office ... and since then I have been photographing her."
"Mother gave me permission to shoot but requested me to always maintain the dignity of those whose pictures I took. I learnt that day that Mother not only cared for the poor and the needy but also gave then dignity," said Rai.
Along with the 40 life-size photos Rai has also brought out a coffe table book of photographs of the Mother and her life.
The exhibition supported by the Consulate of the Republic of Albania will continue in New Delhi till August 31 before travelling to Kolkata where it will be put up on view from October 9 to October 30 at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre.
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