Literature

“Taking pictures is like savoring life at 125th of a second…….it is the instinct of the instant and the instant of the instinct." ~ Marc Riboud Photography cannot change the world, but it can show the world, especially when the world is changing.” ~ Marc Riboud Marc had incurable wanderlust. He had a sixth sense of where great stories were to be found in the world. He was one of the first Western photographers allowed into China after the country’s Cultural Revolution in 1957.He found himself inside an antique store in Beijing and was presented with this view.It is one of the great compositions in the history of photography. So many layers of storing-telling and shapes in one frame with an enduring power. No country in the world has changed more in the 20th and 21st Century than China. It is changing daily as I write these words.Marc Riboud was there with his great eye and talent and his camera returning on multiple trips over four decades. He traveled its city’s streets and villages and captured its cultures and traditions and its almost ironical embrace of Western Capitalism from it’s original ideology.This is I think is his greatest Chinese image. Its composition is superb and sophisticated and its layers of story telling profound. One can almost say with confidence that all human life is here peopled with various generations. Its humanity and power is universal, a testament to its greatness as a photograph.As the Chinese proverb says, “Prefer the chance moment to the chosen moment.”