Marc Riboud. Photographs of Vietnam 1966-1976

In October 1967, Marc Riboud took pictures of American youth protes- ting against the Vietnam war in front of the Pentagon in Washington. One of his pictures, Young Girl Holding a Flower, was published all over the world and became a symbol of peace. In 1970, he published Face of North Vietnam, a book which showed Americans the faces of those they were fighting for the first time.

Profoundly marked by events in Vietnam, Marc Riboud made around a dozen trips to the country between 1966 and 1976, visiting Hanoi, Saigon, the destroyed town of Huế, but also roads, rice paddies, factories, as well as refugee and re-education camps. He produced long reportages evoking his admiration for those taking on the world’s greatest army with their meagre means.

His work on Vietnam, which spans over ten years, is characteristic of Marc Riboud’s singular approach and unique eye, which was drawn to particular places and the people he met. He was not a war photographer, his pictures do not depict fighting and bombing, instead they show survival in the rubble, bodies trying to rest in makeshift shelters, lovers meeting near bomb shelters, the vitality of children; lives which have been torn up and wounded yet which against all odds, are determined to carry on.

Curation:
Lorène Durret & Zoé Barthélémy, Friends of Marc Riboud