Marc Riboud, a French veteran photographer, died in Paris on Tuesday at age 93 from a long disease, his family announced Wednesday.

The late photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the East, was one of the first European photographers to go to China. In 1957, he published his first photograph of China, depicting a fatigued but elegant Chinese woman traveling from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. From then on, Riboud went back and forth to China over 20 times, observing and recording the dynamic country.

"In the 1980s and 1990s, he returns regularly to Orient and Far East, especially in Angkor and Huang Shan, but he also follows the rapid and considerable change of China, a country he has been looking at for 30 years," according to Riboud's website.

Born in 1923 in Saint-Genis-Laval near Lyon,central France, Riboud took his first pictures at the age of 14 using a small vest pocket Kodak that his father gave him on his birthday. Studying engineering, he switched to photo journalism at the age of 30 and became in 1976 president of Magnum agency, an international photographic cooperative who has offices in Paris, New York, London and Tokyo.

Riboud received many awards including Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sony World Photography Awards in 2009.

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