Marc Riboud was born in 1923 in Saint-Genis-Laval near Lyon. In 1937 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris he took his first photos using a pocket Kodak given to him by his father for his 14th birthday. In 1944 he joined the resistance in the Vercors. From 1945 – 1948 he studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale in Lyon and started to work. Three years after he made the decision to become a photographer.

In 1953 his photograph of a painter on the Eiffel Tower appeared in Life Magazine. This was his first publication. Invited by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa he joined Magnum Photos.