Marc Riboud
Encyclopedia
Marc Riboud
Marc Riboud (born 24 June 1923 in Lyon
, France
) is a French
photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the East: The Three Banners of China, Face of North Vietnam, Visions of China, and In China.
, he was active in the French Resistance
from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale from 1945 to 1948.
where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson
, Robert Capa
, and David Seymour
, the founders of Magnum Photos
. By 1953 he was a member of the organization. His ability to capture fleeting moments in life through powerful compositions was already apparent, and this skill was to serve him well for decades to come.
Over the next several decades, Riboud traveled around the world. In 1957 he was one of the first European photographers to go to China
, and In 1968, 1972 and 1976, Riboud made several reportages on North Vietnam
. Later he traveled all over the world, but mostly in Asia
, Africa
, the U.S. and Japan
. Riboud has been witness to the atrocities of war (photographing from both the Vietnam and the American sides of the Vietnam War), and the apparent degradation of a culture repressed from within (China during the years of Chairman Mao Zedong
's Cultural Revolution
). In contrast, he has captured the graces of daily life, set in sun-drenched facets of the globe (Fès
, Angkor
, Acapulco
, Niger
, Bénarès, Shaanxi
), and the lyricism of child's play in everyday Paris. In 1979 Riboud left the Magnum agency.
Riboud's photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, including Life
, Géo, National Geographic, Paris Match
, and Stern
. He twice won the Overseas Press Club
Award, and 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.
He now lives in France.
An image taken by Riboud on October 21, 1967, is among the most celebrated anti-war pictures. Shot in Washington, D.C.
where thousands of anti-war activists had gathered in front of the Pentagon
to protest against America’s involvement in Vietnam
, the picture shows a young girl, Jan Rose Kasmir
, with a flower in her hands and a kindly gaze in her eyes, standing in front of several rifle-wielding soldiers stationed to block the protesters. Riboud said of the photo, “She was just talking, trying to catch the eye of the soldiers, maybe trying to have a dialogue with them. I had the feeling the soldiers were more afraid of her than she was of the bayonets.”
In contrast to the images in his photo essay, A Journey to North Vietnam (1969), Riboud says in the accompanying interview:
"My impression is that the country's leaders will not allow the slightest relaxation of the population at large [...] it is almost as if [...] they are anxious to forestall the great unknown - peace." In the same Newsweek article, he expanded further in his observations on life in North Vietnam
:
There is a divide between what is photographed (or published) and what Riboud had to say by way of his interview. Commenting on this in 1970, the author Geoffrey Wolff
wrote:
, who was living in Paris. They had two children. She became well known for her novel, Sally Hemings
(1979), which earned critical acclaim and became a bestseller. They divorced before 1981.
Marc Riboud (born 24 June 1923 in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) is a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the East: The Three Banners of China, Face of North Vietnam, Visions of China, and In China.
Early life and education
Riboud was born and went to the lycée in Lyon. He photographed his first picture in 1937, using his father's Vest Pocket Kodak camera. As a young man during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was active in the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale from 1945 to 1948.
Career
Until 1951 Riboud worked as an engineer in Lyon factories, but took a week-long picture-taking vacation, inspiring him to become a photographer. He moved to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
, Robert Capa
Robert Capa
Robert Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War...
, and David Seymour
David Seymour
Chim was the pseudonym of David Seymour , a Polish photographer and photojournalist. Born Dawid Szymin in Warsaw to Polish Jewish parents, he became interested in photography while studying in Paris...
, the founders of Magnum Photos
Magnum Photos
Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo...
. By 1953 he was a member of the organization. His ability to capture fleeting moments in life through powerful compositions was already apparent, and this skill was to serve him well for decades to come.
Over the next several decades, Riboud traveled around the world. In 1957 he was one of the first European photographers to go to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and In 1968, 1972 and 1976, Riboud made several reportages on North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
. Later he traveled all over the world, but mostly in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, the U.S. and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Riboud has been witness to the atrocities of war (photographing from both the Vietnam and the American sides of the Vietnam War), and the apparent degradation of a culture repressed from within (China during the years of Chairman Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
). In contrast, he has captured the graces of daily life, set in sun-drenched facets of the globe (Fès
FES
FES or Fes may refer to:* Fes or Fez, a city in Morocco* FES , a human gene that encodes the feline sarcoma oncogene enzyme* FES , a fictional singer from Chaos;Head anime series and alias of Yui Sakakibara for her songs from Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate anime series* Flywheel energy storage, an...
, Angkor
Angkor
Angkor is a region of Cambodia that served as the seat of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. The word Angkor is derived from the Sanskrit nagara , meaning "city"...
, Acapulco
Acapulco
Acapulco is a city, municipality and major sea port in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, southwest from Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semi-circular bay and has been a port since the early colonial period of Mexico’s history...
, Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
, Bénarès, Shaanxi
Shaanxi
' is a province in the central part of Mainland China, and it includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qinling Mountains across the southern part of this province...
), and the lyricism of child's play in everyday Paris. In 1979 Riboud left the Magnum agency.
Riboud's photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, including Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, Géo, National Geographic, Paris Match
Paris Match
Paris Match is a French weekly magazine. It covers major national and international news along with celebrity lifestyle features. It was founded in 1949 by the industrialist Jean Prouvost....
, and Stern
Stern (magazine)
Stern is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. It was founded in 1948 by Henri Nannen, and is currently published by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. In the first quarter of 2006, its print run was 1.019 million copies and it reached 7.84 million readers according to...
. He twice won the Overseas Press Club
Overseas Press Club
The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member...
Award, and has had major retrospective exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art dedicated to the arts of the 20th/21st centuries. It is located at 11 Avenue du Président Wilson in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.-Description:...
and the International Center of Photography
International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography is a photography museum, school, and research center in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
in New York.
He now lives in France.
Photography
One of Riboud's best known images is Eiffel Tower Painter, taken in Paris in 1953. It depicts a man painting the tower, posed like a dancer, perched between the metal armature of the tower. Below him, Paris emerges out of the photographic haze. Lone figures appear frequently in Riboud's images. In Ankara, a central figure is silhouetted against an industrial background, whereas in France, a man lies in a field. The vertical composition emphasizes the landscape, the trees, sky, water and blowing grass, all of which surround but do not overpower the human element.An image taken by Riboud on October 21, 1967, is among the most celebrated anti-war pictures. Shot in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
where thousands of anti-war activists had gathered in front of the Pentagon
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagram is an example of a self-intersecting pentagon.- Regular pentagons :In a regular pentagon, all sides are equal in length and...
to protest against America’s involvement in Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, the picture shows a young girl, Jan Rose Kasmir
Jan Rose Kasmir
Jan Rose Kasmir is a former US high-school student who took part in the protest against America’s involvement in Vietnam in Washington DC where thousands of anti-war activists had gathered in front of The Pentagon on 21 October 1967 and was photographed by famous French photographer Marc...
, with a flower in her hands and a kindly gaze in her eyes, standing in front of several rifle-wielding soldiers stationed to block the protesters. Riboud said of the photo, “She was just talking, trying to catch the eye of the soldiers, maybe trying to have a dialogue with them. I had the feeling the soldiers were more afraid of her than she was of the bayonets.”
In contrast to the images in his photo essay, A Journey to North Vietnam (1969), Riboud says in the accompanying interview:
"My impression is that the country's leaders will not allow the slightest relaxation of the population at large [...] it is almost as if [...] they are anxious to forestall the great unknown - peace." In the same Newsweek article, he expanded further in his observations on life in North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
:
"I was astonished, for example, at the decidedly gay atmosphere in HanoiHanoiHanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
's Reunification Park on a Sunday afternoon [...] I honestly did not have the impression they were discussing socialismSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
or the 'American aggressors' [...] I saw quite a few patriotic posters crudely 'improved' with erotic graffiti and sketches."
There is a divide between what is photographed (or published) and what Riboud had to say by way of his interview. Commenting on this in 1970, the author Geoffrey Wolff
Geoffrey Wolff
Geoffrey Wolff is an American novelist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer. Among his honors and recognition are the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy in Berlin , and the Guggenheim...
wrote:
"Riboud's photographs illustrate the proposition. The French photographer has been to North Vietnam twice [...] and he is most friendly, on the evidence of his pictures, to the people and the institutions he found there. His photographs are of happy faces,[...] An Air Force ace illustrates how he shot the American "air pirates" from the sky [...] Who knows the truth about these places?"
Marriage and family
In 1961 Riboud married the American sculptor Barbara ChaseBarbara Chase-Riboud
Barbara Chase-Riboud is an American novelist, poet, sculptor and visual artist, perhaps best known for her historical fiction. Much of her work has explored themes related to slavery and exploitation of women....
, who was living in Paris. They had two children. She became well known for her novel, Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
(1979), which earned critical acclaim and became a bestseller. They divorced before 1981.
Exhibitions
- 1963 Marc Riboud (The Art Institute, Chicago)
- 1966 China (Institute of Contemporary Art, London)
- 1967 China (The Photographers Gallery, London)
- 1974 Marc Riboud (The Photographers Gallery, London)
- 1975 Nord Vietnam (Rote Fabrik, Zurich)
- 1975 Marc Riboud (International Centre of Photography, NY)
- 1977 Marc Riboud (Galerie Municipale, Toulouse)
- 1978 Marc Riboud (Galerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris)
- 1981 From China & Elsewhere (Gallery Photograph, NY)
- 1981 China (The Photographers Gallery, London)
- 1982 China (Galerie Photo, Geneva)
- 1984 Hommage a Marc Riboud (Centre d’action culturelle and ‘China’ Galerie ACPA, Bordeaux)
- 1985 Retrospective (Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville, Paris)
- 1988 Marc Riboud (Galerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris)
- 1988 Marc Riboud (International Centre of Photography, NY)
- 1996 China, Travelling Exhibition (Centre National de Photographie, Paris - Barbican, London - International Centre of Photography, NY)
- 2004 Retrospective (Maison européenne de la Photographie, Paris)
- 2008 Les Inédits de Marc Riboud (Atelier Publimod, Paris)
- 2009 Marc Riboud. L'Instinct de l'instant. 50 Years of Photography (Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris)
- 2009 China 1954-2004 (Month of Photography AsiaMonth of Photography AsiaMonth of Photography Asia is an international festival of photography organised in Singapore since 2002.The festival serves as a platform to promote photography both as an art form and as a creative industry...
, Singapore) - 2010 Krishna Riboud's Garden (Musée des Arts asiatiques—Guimet, Paris)