2003 Infinity Award: Cornell Capa Award

Marc Riboud is best known for his extensive reports on the East: The Three Banners of China (1966), Face of North Vietnam (1970), Visions of China (1981), and his recent In China (1996).

Riboud was born in Lyon, France in 1923 and made his first picture in 1937. He was active in the French Resistance and, after the war, studied engineering at the École Centrale in Lyons. In 1952, he moved to Paris to prusue a career as a freelance photographer. He was invited to join Magnum that same year by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. The young photographer befriended George Rodger, another Magnum co-founder, whom he would later join in the Middle East. 

Riboud values authenticity and thinks of the photographer as an existential traveler. His Eastern documentaries are remarkable for their spontaneity and harmony; rich encounters produce portraits of citizens who pause long enough to give some account of themselves, while his color photographs capture sweeping views of pristine nature and chaotic urban life. In the 1950s, he traveled to India and then China, where he returned for a lengthy stay in 1965 with writer K.S. Karol. And he went to North Vietnam three separate times during the 1960s and '70s to report on the war.

Riboud served as president of Magnum from 1975-76. His photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, including Life, Geo, and Paris-Match. He twice won the Overseas Press Club Award (1966 and 1970), 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. In recent years, he has worked mainly in black and white and on his own initiative; Shanghai and Istanbul (both 2003) are his latest books. Riboud received the Leica Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.