Marc Riboud

(French, 1923–2016)

Marc Riboud was a French photographer best known for capturing politically charged moments during the Cultural Revolution in China, the Vietnam War, and protests in the United States during the 1960s. In one his most iconic works, the anti-war image Flower Child (1967), Riboud captured the intimate moment of a young protestor holding a flower towards National Guardsmen poised with bayonets outside the Pentagon. Rather than frame the entire scene, he discovered images that would have otherwise been forgotten to history. “The eye is made to see and not to think. A good photograph is a surprise,” the artist once said. Born on June 24, 1923 in Saint-Genis-Laval, France, he fought in the French Resistance during World War II before studying engineering at the École Centrale de Lyon. It was while employed in a factory as an engineer that Riboud began photographing more seriously. He went on to become a member of Magnum Photos, the organization founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. In 1976, he became president of Magnum Photos, but resigned three years later in order to spend time travelling. The artist’s photographs appeared in several magazine publications, including Life, National Geographic, and Stern. Riboud died on August 30, 2016 in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.