Marc Riboud (French, b.1923) is a photographer best known for his images of the East. At the Great Exhibition of Paris in 1937, he took his first pictures. From 1945 to 1948, he studied engineering and worked in a factory, but soon left this job to pursue photography full time. He moved to Paris, where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and David Seymour, the founders of Magnum Photos. In 1953, he became a member of the organization. That same year, he published his now-famous image of a painter standing on the Eiffel Tower in Life magazine.
In 1955, he traveled throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan, and eventually landed in India, where he remained for one year. He then became one of the first European photographers to travel to China.
After three months in the USSR in 1960, he followed the independence movement in Algeria and Western Africa.
Between 1968 and 1969, he was one of the few photographers allowed to travel in South and North Vietnam. He also captured the iconic anti-war image Flower Power, which was taken in Washington, D.C., in 1967. In 1976, he became president of Magnum, but resigned three years later in order to travel more.
His photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, including Life, Géo, National Geographic, Paris Match, and Stern. He was the recipient of two Overseas Press Club Awards, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards.
He has had major retrospective exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the International Center of Photography in New York.
Riboud was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998. His work is frequently exhibited at museums throughout Europe, as well as the United States, China, and Japan.
