French ‘flower power’ photographer Marc Riboud dies

Paris (AFP) – One of France’s most famous photojournalists, Marc Riboud, whose 1967 image of a protester confronting US soldiers with a flower captured the movement against the Vietnam War, has died aged 93.

Riboud, equally famed for a 1953 picture of a workman painting the Eiffel Tower high above the Paris skyline, died on Tuesday after a long illness, a family member told AFP.

A master of black-and-white imagery, Riboud joined the prestigious Magnum agency at the invitation of its founders, photography greats Henri-Cartier Bresson and Robert Capa.

Riboud, whose shots appeared in top magazines such as Look, Life, Stern and Paris Match, was among few photographers who managed to enter North Vietnam in the late 1960s.

In 1957 he had been among the first Europeans to travel in Communist China.

Riboud was the president of Magnum from 1974 to 1976, but he quit the group in 1979 saying he “didn’t like the competition for glory” that it fostered.

Lauded for his sensitivity towards his subjects, Riboud said he took pictures “like a musician hums”.

Born on June 24, 1923, near the eastern city of Lyon to a well-off family, Riboud had six siblings including his brother Antoine, founder of the Danone food giant, who died in 2002.

He began taking photos at age 14 with a Vest Pocket Kodak given to him by his father.

Riboud was active in the French Resistance during World War II, then trained as an engineer and worked at a factory before devoting himself entirely to photography.

Riboud’s passion would take him across Asia, with Japan inspiring his first of around 15 books, “Women of Japan”. 

He chronicled developments in China over four decades, also working in Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa.

Riboud “was a great photographer, poet and humanist… with a unique signature: a respect and love for people who bore witness to their daily lives and suffering around the world,” said Alain Genestar, former editor of Paris Match.

Riboud’s work in Cuba in 1963, including a portrait of Fidel Castro on the eve of the assassination of US president John F Kennedy, is the subject of the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival that opened Saturday in the southern French town of Perpignan.

“He was a great humanist and a great guy,” festival director Jean-Francois Leroy told AFP. “Many photographers were inspired by him without ever equalling him.”