16 May 2011 Last updated at 10:18

In pictures: Rare images of Rabindranath Tagore

About 100 recently-discovered photographs of the author and playwright Rabindranath Tagore, revered in Bangladesh and India, have been put on display in the Bangladeshi port city of Chittagong to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth this month.

The pictures show the poet and artist, who died aged 80 in 1941, in a new and more intimate light at the Viswa Bharati university he founded in Santiniketan, a small town in the Indian state of West Bengal.

The exhibition is being held by the Alliance Francaise in Chittagong in association with the Alain Danielou Committee. Photographer Mr Danielou, who took these pictures, lived in Santiniketan from 1932 to 1940 and there are many pictures of the university buildings.

Also in the exhibition is this portrait of Rani Chanda (1912-1997), author, dancer and wife of Tagore's private secretary. She earned great fame by performing Tagore's dance dramas at home and abroad, but was imprisoned by the British during India's independence struggle.

Renowned Bengali artist Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) was a pupil of Rabindranath Tagore's. Mr Bose is considered to have produced some of India's best modern paintings.

Women students at Viswa Bharati university

The university was founded with money Tagore received from winning the the Nobel prize for literature in 1913. At its foundation it was described as "a gate to rural India".

Students in the old Library at Viswa Bharati university

"They are a glimpse of life in the golden age of the university," said Samuel Berthet, director of Chittagong's Alliance Francaise. Mr Berthet discovered the photographs while sorting out Mr Danielou's archives at his house in Italy.

Students working at Viswa Bharati university

Many of the pictures portray campus life at Santiniketan with teachers and students working together. The university's more recent alumni include Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.

"We don't want to commemorate Tagore as something of the past - he is of the present," said Mr Berthet.

South Asia

In pictures: Rare images of Rabindranath Tagore

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