One man's snapshot, a nation's memory

Among professional photographers, Marc Riboud is reputable as a recorder of China's dramatic changes during the past decades. Riboud's exhibition, The Instinctive Moment, opened on May 25 at the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangdong Province.

As part of the annual Sino-French cultural exchange, the exhibition is expected to take audiences back to China in 1957, as more than half of the pieces were taken in China, decades ago. 

Born in 1923 in Lyon, the French photographer first ventured to China in 1956, then the first Western photographer to come to this socialist country since 1949.

He published his first photograph of China in 1957, depicting a fatigued but elegant Chinese woman traveling from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. Intimate photos such as this gave him recognition among Chinese people.

From then on, Riboud went back and forth to the East over 20 times, observing and recording the dynamic country. Riboud once said that he spent more time in Beijing's Wangfujing Street than Champs Elysees, in Paris. His talents in capturing fleeting moments in life through his powerful compositions was first exposed to the world through his photograph, Eiffel Tower Painter, shot in Paris in 1953. 

Throughout his career, Riboud insisted on capturing moments without provoking the subject. His pictures emphasize details, making even the simplest picture thought-provoking.

In China, he has taken many pictures of symbolic significance and recorded changes in the society throughout the past half century.

Riboud famously captured Mao Zedong drinking from a goblet and Zhou Enlai posing with his V-like gesture.

Riboud also directs his lens on the lives of ordinary Chinese people, miners, factory workers, peasants, students, soldiers, and the red guards during the Cultural Revolution.

To some extent, photography focusing on the Chinese has become an important mark of Riboud's career. His lenses are the eyes that have witnessed and recorded social change in China. His works about China, like The Three Banners of China, Visions of China and In China, are an indispensable part of China's memory.

Xiao Quan, a Chinese photographer who once worked as Riboud's assistant, told reporters at the exhibition that Chinese people should be appreciative of his work, as Riboud's pictures have affected Western impressions about China.

But China is just one station of his journey. As a photographer, Riboud has ventured around the world, from Africa to the Middle East, from Europe to Asia, to capture the moments that interest him.

From 1968 to 1969, he was among the few photographers allowed into Vietnam. He stayed in the former Soviet Union for three months in 1960 and also reported on the independence of Algeria and Africa.

Riboud has held exhibitions in major cities like Paris, London, New York, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

Xiao said that Riboud carries his camera all the time, always ready to capture moments on films.

"I don't create stories. I'm just a collector of trivial details," Riboud said in an interview with a photo magazine, adding that details that often go unnoticed are the most important to him.

Unlike many photographers who leave a place after finishing a project, Riboud lingers around after the job is done. What attracts him is not an event or a task, but daily life itself.

As the name of his exhibition The Instinctive Moment suggests, Riboud focuses on instinct, sensation and intuition.

"They always ask me whether I've got what I want," he said in a documentary film Contacts. "I don't know what I want. Photographing is an encounter, an accident," he said.

Global Times