Surprises of every kind lie in wait for the photographer - they open the eyes and quicken the heartbeat of those with a passion for looking. Published to coincide with a major retrospective of Marc Riboud's work, this is the first work in English devoted to the entire career of this outstanding twentieth-century photojournalist. Riboud has created some of the iconic images of our time: workmen balanced like dancers on the powerful metal girders of the Eiffel Tower; a young Vietnam war protester facing down a rank of riflemen with a flower in her hand. Riboud took his first photographs at the age of 14 with his father's Vest Pocket Kodak. Eager to investigate the complexities of contemporary reality, Riboud worked for the legendary Magnum agency, alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and Chim (David Seymour). Starting in 1955, he traveled all over the world, from Nepal to Alaska, Mexico to Algeria, his camera always at the ready. While many of his shots reveal the anguish of war, others capture the fleeting delights of a swim in a sun-dappled river or children learning to whistle in a Shanghai street. Here are Riboud's best images, presented by those who know him.

Marc Riboud's images are a window on a world in transition as China reinvents itself with dizzying speed--his is as revealing a window as we are likely to find. The contrast between China old and new, as interpreted by Riboud, is an often startling one that cannot help but inform and intrigue. He specializes in the juxtaposition of images, perhaps none are more jarring than his photograph of a poor man lugging a sack of belongings down a trash-littered back street while a pair of chubby-cheeked babies glance over his shoulder in a nearby poster and a porno actress bares her chest in an ad overhead. Riboud's home is France, his territory is the world from Vietnam to Iran, but his heart and soul are apparently in the China he has covered from the days of Mao's revolution through the erosion of Communism to the country's modern economic upheaval.