Xavier Zimbardo

Xavier Zimbardo was born in France in 1955. He studied history, geography, literature and psychology at Paris University. He became a freelance photographer as an autodidact and travelled worldwide, working for many magazines. His love for India, where he learned pranayama yoga, goes back a long way. As an author he has undertaken personal researches into the metamorphosis of photographs through their degradation and erosion. He has published a dozen books in Europe and in the USA. His work is held in prestigious museums, such as the BNF (French National Library), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, and others. In 2006 he created PHOTSOC, an International Festival of Social Photography, in the poorest suburbs of Paris, to provide young authors with an opportunity to present their work. He teaches local associations to express their everyday life through the photographic medium. He joined Getty Images in 2011 and lives in Sarcelles near Paris.