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The exhibition, featuring 83 pictures from the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay to the 2010 edition in South Africa, is being staged from June 9 to July 15 at the Antara Photojournalism Gallery located in the historic Pasar Baru quarter of the Indonesian capital.

In a festive ceremony featuring live samba music, Brazil’s Ambassador to Indonesia Paulo Soares shared the pride of his countrymen in hosting the 2014 World Cup as well as the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

Mervin Nambiar, AFP’s sales and marketing director in the Asia-Pacific region, said the agency is sending some 180 staff – comprising reporters and photographers as well as video and multimedia journalists – to cover Rio 2014.

“Our team will report all the events in Brazil for football fans worldwide. In Indonesia, all this content will be available to our newspaper, broadcast and new media clients through Antara,” Nambiar said.

Antara’s commercial director, Hempi Prajudi, opened the exhibition together with Soares and Nambiar in the presence of local and international media, Jakarta cultural figures and avid photojournalists and football fans.

The photo collection shown in the exhibition is contained in a special 108-page catalogue explaining the story behind each picture.

“France and Indonesia are both great football-loving nations and we hope this exhibition will delight visitors to this historic museum and gallery during the current championships in Brazil,” Gilles Campion, AFP’s Asia-Pacific regional director, said in a preface to the booklet.

One of the highlights of the evening was the showing of a video on the making of an AFP-backed special project on the central role of football in the daily life of Rio de Janeiro’s notorious “favelas” or slums.

Christophe Simon, AFP’s head of photography in Brazil, taught basic photography techniques to a group of 18 adolescents from the so-called “Cidade de Deus” (City of God), with amazing results.

Together, they photographed the favela residents’ passion for football, and the result was a collection of 70 pictures distributed globally by AFP to leading media clients.

About AFP

AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth coverage of the events shaping our world from conflicts to politics, sports, entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, science and technology. With 2,260 journalists spread across almost every country, AFP covers the world 24 hours a day in six languages. AFP delivers the news in video, text, photos, multimedia and graphics to a wide range of customers including newspapers and magazines, radio and TV channels, web sites and portals, mobile operators, corporate clients as well as public institutions.