Marc Riboud
Marc Riboud (1923–2016) was a master of lyrical reportage and a leading figure in humanist photography. Over more than sixty years, Riboud traveled the world capturing decisive yet poetic moments that revealed the dignity, resilience, and quiet strength of ordinary people. His images bear witness to history not through spectacle, but through subtlety and grace, and his belief in photography as a form of peace and understanding remained constant throughout his life.
Born in Saint-Genis-Laval, France, Riboud joined the French Resistance during World War II before pursuing engineering. A trip to Paris in 1951 with his camera shifted the course of his life. By 1953, his photograph Eiffel Tower Painter caught the attention of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, leading to an invitation to join Magnum Photos, where he would become a core member.
Riboud’s early assignments took him across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He was one of the first Western photographers allowed into Maoist China and North Vietnam, documenting lives behind the political curtain with sensitivity and nuance. His images from the Vietnam War era—especially the iconic The Ultimate Confrontation: The Flower and the Bayonet (1967), showing a young protester placing a flower into the barrel of a soldier’s gun—became symbols of peaceful resistance.
Throughout his career, Riboud photographed a wide range of subjects, from factory workers and peasants to artists and revolutionaries. He brought his camera into the lives of everyday people in places as varied as Iran, Ghana, Cuba, and the American South. His compositions, often black and white, are marked by clarity, balance, and a sense of stillness amid motion. As he once said, “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
His work has been published extensively in Life, National Geographic, Paris Match, Stern, and Le Monde, and he authored several influential photobooks, including The Three Banners of China, Journal, Marc Riboud in China, and Vers l’Orient. Riboud was awarded the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement and the ICP Infinity Award, among many others.
Riboud’s photographs have been the subject of numerous exhibitions and are held in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His quiet, human-centered approach to photography continues to influence generations of photographers drawn to the profound within the everyday.
