The National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet is dedicating a formidable exhibition until September 6 to Marc Riboud (1923-2016), one of the greatest French press photographers of the 20th century.
During this retrospective, entitled “
Possible Histories
”, we travel from room to room, his works, chronologically, from one country to another.
The first photos date from the 1940s, the last from the early 2000s. We follow him through his travels and reports that take him from Turkey to India, via Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, Alaska, Africa, Vietnam, the former USSR, or even China, a country for which he is passionate and which he will photograph all his life.
Read also: Marc Riboud, the eye of a master of French photography
If some of her photos - “
Girl with a Flower
” (1967), an activist against the Vietnam War facing armed soldiers in front of the Pentagon, or “
the Painter of the Eiffel Tower
”, a worker balancing on the structure of the Tower (1953) - have toured the world, his name remains less well known than that of Henri-Cartier Bresson who made him enter the prestigious Magnum agency; and whose work is also the subject of another exhibition at the National Library of France (BNF) in Paris. Marc Riboud is nevertheless an immense photographer, with a look full of sensitivity and humanity, who deserves that we dwell on his work.
National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, 6, place d'Iéna, Paris 16th (
Guimet.fr). Until September 6, 2021.
