Marc Riboud in China

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.