1. Task 3
Marc Riboud is born in 1923 in Lyon. At the Great Exhibition of Paris in 1937 he takes his first
pictures with the small Vest-Pocket camera his father offered him. During the war, he took part in the
Vercors fights. From 1945 to 1948 he studies engineering and works in a factory. After a week of
holiday, during which he covers the cultural festival of Lyon, he drops his engineering job for
photography.
In 1953, he publishes his famous « Eiffel Tower’s painter » photograph in Life magazine and joins
Magnum agency after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. Robert Capa later sends him to
London to see girls and learn English. He doesn’t learn that much English but photographs intensely.
In 1955, he crosses Middle-East and Afghanistan to reach India, where he remains one year. He then
heads toward China for a first stay in 1957. After three months in USSR in 1960, he follows the
independences movement in Algeria and Western Africa.
Between 1968 and 1969 he’s one of the few photographers allowed to travel in South and North
Vietnam. In 1976 he becomes president of Magnum and resigns three years later; since the 1980’s he
keeps travelling at his own tempo.
