Michel Setboun

In 1976, having just graduated as an architect, Michel Setboun changed course and went to Angola to photograph the war of independence. Three years later, he published one of the first books on the Iranian Revolution. Driven by a tenacious desire to be in the right place at the right time, preferably before his colleagues, only one thing would now be lacking: the time to be everywhere at once. After Iran came Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq War, Lebanon, and Poland. In 1982, he was wounded in El Salvador, and in 1984, he received the first World Press Photo award for his work on the expulsion of refugees from Nigeria. In the meantime, he discovered Albania and then Mongolia, and began to cover longer-term projects, taking a more nuanced approach. 

He documented the final years of the British Empire in Hong Kong. His reports appeared in magazines worldwide and in numerous books. He collaborated with major photo agencies, starting with Sipa, then Black Star, Rapho, Sygma, Corbis, and finally Getty. His photos of Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, and the Pope graced the covers of leading magazines. But it was in the early 1990s that he became a freelance photographer to pursue long-term projects, continuing to travel the world for extended photojournalism assignments.

For the past ten years, he has dedicated himself to the world's legendary cities: Paris, New York, Cairo, Venice, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Istanbul, in artistic projects such as books, exhibitions, and photographic installations..