Marc Riboud

Marc Riboud was born in St.-Genis-Laval, France on June 24, 1923. During World War II, he fought around Vercors as a member of the Resistance. He studied mechanical engineering at the École Centrale in Lyon and took a factory job in the town of Villeurbanne after graduating in 1948. In 1951, he decided to become a freelance photojournalist. From 1953 until 1979, he traveled and photographed constantly for Magnum, a photo collective. Afterward, he worked for himself.

He documented many important events during his lifetime including the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran; the trial of Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in Lyon during World War II; the end of apartheid in South Africa; and the mood in the United States before the election of President Barack Obama. His best known photographs were of a workman between a lattice of girders while painting the Eiffel Tower and a young woman presenting a flower to a group of bayonet-wielding members of the National Guard during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon. Several monographs of his photographs were published including Marc Riboud: Photographs at Home and Abroad, Marc Riboud: Journal, and Marc Riboud in China: Forty Years of Photography. He died on August 30, 2016 at the age of 93.

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