On July 1st 1962, Riboud found himself in Algiers, soaking up the city on one his random walks,. The Sunday was relatively quiet for the time of day, and the dry, hot air was filled with yellow dust, swirled up from the pavements as cars and people were passing. In a matter of a few streets the peaceful atmosphere changed and he was confronted with a columns of activists marching the street; waving flags and banners, heatedly shouting phrases in French and Arabic. Riboud didn’t hesitate. Knowing the best photo would be in front of the moving crowd, he carefully navigated through the pushing sea of people with his Leica camara. Walking backwards while facing the advancing masses he clicked the release-button a few times, catching a couple of frames that would become some the most recognised images from Algiers in the early sixties. A few days later, Algeria gained its independence from France.

Ten years before walking along the bustling streets of Algiers, Riboud was in his late twenties and working as an engineer in Lyon, France. A week-long holiday in ’51 would change the path of his life. Travelling at his own speed and simply “seeing” the people and landscape around him re-ignited an old passion first explored as a young teenager with his father’s Kodak camera. Riboud’s heart was in photography.

Riboud had an eye for attention-grabbing compositions and through the viewfinder he instinctively detected lines and shapes that created perfect harmony in the rectangular space of a photograph. His move from Lyon to Paris in ’53 placed him in the geographical centre of post-war European photography and Riboud didn’t waste any time. Newspaper stands, magnificent residences, grand boulevards, and the Parisiens in their everyday life were all subjects in his monochrome echoes of the French capital.

One day he noticed the unusual painters at the Eiffel Tower. High above the city - and with no safety net - they climbed the metal structure of ‘La Tour Eiffel’, day after day, with their brushes and paint-buckets to keep the trademark of Paris respectable. Riboud followed a few of them, and from the safety of the stairs he started taking photos with a 50mm lens. One of the photograph, Paris (1953), would circle the globe, showing the painter Zazou “caged” in a triangular frame of metal beams, holding his brush in one hand while effortlessly - as if in a choreographed acrobatic dance - balancing high above the city of Paris.

Photos like the ‘painting acrobats’ quickly got noticed by his peers and renowned photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, both founders of Magnum Photos, would play a significant role as future mentors to Riboud. In ’54, when the acclaimed English photojournalistic magazine, Picture Post, were doing a story about the best and worst of Britain, Capa recommended Riboud, not informing the young talent that no-one else wanted to take the assignment of what was referred to as “the saddest city in England”. Riboud’s photographs of Leeds went into historic oblivion and when rediscovered decades later, a remarkable story unfolded, revealing a moving portrait of the people of Leeds - and one that left the Kirkstall cooling towers and other city landmarks to the backdrop. Images that in many ways were different to those of traditional post-war photojournalism.

It was a six-month journey by road to India that reassured Riboud of the rewards of travelling at his own speed. In ’56, he reached Jaipur, a town famous for its palaces, pink buildings and free roaming peacocks, and the historic regional capital of Rajasthan, some 250 kilometres south-west of New Delhi. A morning walk lead to one of Riboud’s best known images, Jaipur (1956). Here, a peacock and two women in traditional saris cross a town square in the early hours as the sun rises. The long shadow of the palace opposite is cast on the building in the background, and it seem as both the women and peacock, independently, are heading slow-paced in same direction, minding their business of the day. As beautiful and peaceful this moment is, the black-and-white photograph misses the chromatic rhyme between the saris and the peacock’s flamboyant feathers.

The trip to India ignited an strong connection between Riboud and Asia. A love that would never burn out. The following decades Riboud returned regularly to the continent and shot several acclaimed series of work, including ‘Capital of Heaven’ from the majestic and mist-covered peaks of the Huang Shan mountains.

Throughout his career Riboud gravitated towards political hotspots. Perhaps it is his proximity to upheaval and people’s heartfelt desire of change, that occasionally causes the artist’s photos to be understood as opinionated and having a documentary quality. To him it is a misinterpretation and a result of the viewer not looking close enough. His photos are about people and composition. A photo of activists in Beijing, shouting slogans as they carry large rectangular cardboard portraits of Mao Zedong and the Vietnamese revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh, across Tiananmen Square, raises a question of who are they voicing at; and the young woman offering a flower - fit for a cylindrical barrel - to a guarding soldier outside the Pentagon in ’67 seeks to uncover the opposing sides of American youth. Riboud tried his best not to be serious. He had a deep-rooted desire to explain a situation from a single frame, building a report and a kind of trust between the subject and the viewer.

Good photographs move people closer, and what comes after, such as the circumstances surrounding the image, is photo-journalism.

For sixty years, Marc Riboud demonstrated to the world his immense talent by portraying people and his surroundings through black-and-white images. His photographs have been widely exhibited and subject to numerous solo shows and museum retrospectives; the latest in 2021 at Guimet in Paris. More than fifty books were published during his career, collectively creating a historic chronicle of the places he visited, even though he never intended it so. Riboud passed away in his home in Paris in August, 2016.

Four works from the series ‘Capital of Heaven’ and additional two of Riboud’s most famous monochrome photographs, the acrobat painter from Paris (1953) and Jaipur (1956), were released as photographic print editions in an exclusive collaboration between Marc Riboud and Eyestorm in 2001; the same year he received the Leica Lifetime Achievement Award. Presented in editions of 150, 175 and 200, the iris prints are signed in pencil on front and numbered on verso.

To view the photographic editions in more detail and to find more information about the works, visit Marc Riboud’s artist page here.