10 amazing photographers who left us in 2016

The art of finding beauty in destruction is a rare and courageous skill. But Marc Riboud, a giant of humanist photography, did so with stylish ease. "O Death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!" Shakespeare once wrote. Riboud, with his sensitivity and deep fervor for life, made pure all he photographed. His most iconic image, showing Vietnam War protester Jan Rose Kasmir holding a flower as she confronted a row of National Guard serviceman, can be credited with helping shift public opinion against the war. Taken in Washington D.C. in 1967, the picture became the symbol of the flower power movement. "He had a very poetic eye. His pictures were able to move effortlessly from the particular to the general," Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin tells TIME. "His picture of Jan Rose not only represented the anti-Vietnam War movement but came to symbolize something against all oppression and war."

Riboud was born in St-Genis-Laval, near Lyon, in 1923, to a bourgeois banking family, the fifth of seven children. He moved to Paris in 1952 to pursue a career in photography, after which Henri Cartier-Bresson quickly took him under his wing. A year later, the Magnum co-founder nominated Riboud to the photo agency, before it even had a proper membership process. Riboud regarded his tutor as both a teacher and a tyrant, but learned much about the art of good photography. Up until his departure from the agency in 1979, Riboud travelled the world photographing for Magnum. Though he didn't regard himself as a war photographer, his pictures taken in turbulent places throughout China, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran and Africa, Tibet and Japan earned him a reputation as the eminent photojournalist of his time. Most notable was perhaps his work covering the Cultural Revolution in China during the 1960s. "He really was going in when very few western photographers were able to do that and created over a number of years, an incredible body of work," Magnum president Martin Parr tells TIME. "When I think about China in that era, his is the work I think about."

But is it perhaps his lesser-known work that illustrates his incredible depth of vision. Parr points to his photographs taken in Leeds, England, in the early 1950s, which offer a gentle, deferential look at a post-war working class northern city. "He was able to articulate, like all good photographers, his relationship to the world," says Parr. "He was able to find quiet elegance out of nothing much at all. That's the great skill of a photographer with that ability; they can transform the most banal subjects into extraordinary images. That's a very rare gift." His clear vision, creative coherence and journalistic skill set him apart from his contemporaries, and, as Franklin notes; "There are lot of voices in Magnum, it's a kind of choir. But Marc's was particularly distinctive. He will be terribly missed." Riboud died on August 30 of complications relating to Alzheimer's disease. He was 93.

Award-wining photographer Fan Ho has won 280 awards from international exhibitions and competitions worldwide since 1956. Ho has been elected Fellow of the Photographic Society of America, Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, England; Honorary Member of the Photographic Societies of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore and etc, and was honored with One-Man-Shows in the above countries. Ho's works can be seen and have been published in many International Photographic Annuals all over the world.

Fan Ho has been invited by 12 Universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong as "Visiting Professor, " teaching the art of film-making and photography. Fan Ho has written five books, one of them containing all his award-winning prints that is currently a permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. The Living Theatre is Mr. Ho's latest book done by MB Editions. Further, Fan Ho is an accomplished and acclaimed Hong Kong film director. He won the "Best Film Award" in Banbury International Film Festival in England. Three of his films have received the "Official Selection" of the International Film Festivals of Cannes, Berlin and San Francisco; and five of his films have been selected in the "Permanent Collection" of the National Film Archives of Taiwan and Hong Kong. He has also been elected as "judge" of the Taiwan Golden Horse Film Festival and Hong Kong Oscar Film Award.It is this diverse cultural background that makes Fan Ho's creative style so unique, full of lyrical beauty, dramatic power, and poetic grandeur. Fan Ho is represented by Modernbook Gallery.

Gérard Rondeau was a French photographer. He took photographs of World War I battlefields in his native Marne, the Reims cathedral, and black-and-white portraits of celebrities and authors. His photography was exhibited both in France and internationally. He was the recipient of an award for his work. He was the illustrator of over 20 non-fiction books. Rondeau worked at the Alliance Francaise in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in the 1970s. He was inspired by a collection photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson he found in their library. He first took photographs of the Reims cathedral and battlefields from World War I in his native Marne. He was best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and authors. Over the years, he took photographs of celebrities including Iggy Pop, Clint Eastwood, Peter Falk, Christian Louboutin, Serge Reggiani, Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Rossellini, Paul Bowles, Alain Bashung, Pierre Soulages, Jacques Derrida and Jim Jarmusch.

His photography was exhibited at the Grand Palais and the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris. It was also exhibited at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin; Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; the National Gallery of Indonesia in Jakarta, as well as other museums in Rome, Sarajevo, and New York City.

Rondeau was the author of more than fifteen books. He travelled to Yugoslavia with Médecins du Monde during the wars of the 1990s, and later published his diary about his experience. Many of his photographs were published in Le Monde over the course of 20 years.

Rondeau was the recipient of the Best Multimedia Award from the Globes de Cristal Award in 2007.

Al Weber was born in Denver Colorado in 1930. He received an A.A. in photography and a B.A. in Eduction from the University of Denver and served as a Captain in the Marines during the Korean Conflict. After his military service he moved to the Monterey Peninsula and established himself as a commercial photograph. Weber's career spans six decades. He is internationally recognized for the breadth of his work and contributions as a teacher and mentor. Weber's images have been shown in over 200 exhibitions. An accomplished commercial photographer, his commissions include work for Time-Life, Fortune and Holiday magazines. Corporate clients include Dupont, Kaiser, International Harvester, Eastman Kodak, Polaroid and Hasselblad. His photographs are in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, M. H. de Young Museum, UCLA, Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Ansel Adams Collection.

For Magnum, the loss of Peter Marlow, esteemed British photographer and co-founder of its London office, was "terrible and huge," says colleague Stuart Franklin. As the two-time president of the agency, his extraordinary talent and personal pragmatism burnished Magnum's reputation as an agency of excellence.

Marlow, along with Chris Steele-Perkins, was instrumental in launching Magnum's London office in the 1980s. The office, whose purchase Marlow secured, was fitted out with the help of his wife, Fiona, an interior designer. These "very practical interventions" are a significant and lasting contribution to the "collective spirit of Magnum." Franklin adds: "At Magnum we're a kind of a co-operative and he was just extraordinarily generous. I think his legacy therefore is one of generosity. But also the power and importance of his eye and his photography."

Born in 1952 in Kenilworth, England, Marlow read psychology at Manchester University. His photographic career began aboard a cruise ship, touring the Caribbean. In 1976, he joined the Sygma photo agency in Paris. He documented the volatile situations in Lebanon and Northern Ireland but ultimately turned his back on photojournalism, arguing, "the stereotype of the concerned photojournalist disguised the disheartening reality of dog-eat-dog competition between photographers hunting fame at all costs." Marlow became an established portraitist and photographed many British Prime Ministers including Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Tony Blair. One of his best-known series called Liverpool Looking out to the Sea, taken over eight years in the 1980s, offers a deferential, surprising take on a city clouded by economic depression.

Marlow is also well known for the careful and dedicated documentation of his three sons and wife, which arguably developed into his most significant body of work. "Peter was always searching for different ways of expressing himself with photography," says Franklin. It was in these photo-essays, adds Steele-Perkins, that Marlow's photographic voice truly shone through: "It was those individual eccentric moments that he was most interested in capturing, from almost nothing."

In his latest book, Marlow documented 42 Anglican cathedrals across England, with the series going on display at Coventry Cathedral. "I think we kind of potentially never saw the best of Peter," says Steele-Perkins. "I knew him as an excellent photojournalist and then he continued to evolve and move into a more personal approach to looking at the world. One felt it would be very interesting to see where he went next." Marlow died on February 21 after a struggle with bone-marrow cancer. He is survived by his three sons and wife.

Malick Sidibé was a photographer known for his black-and-white images chronicling the exuberant lives and culture, often of youth, in his native Bamako, Mali in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Sidibé's work documents a transitional moment as Mali gained its independence and transformed from a French colony steeped in tradition to a more modern independent country looking toward the West. He captured candid images in the streets, nightclubs, and sporting events and ran a formal portrait studio.

In a 2010 interview with John Henley in The Guardian, Sidibé explained, “To be a good photographer you need to have a talent to observe, and to know what you want. You have to choose the shapes and the movements that please you, that look beautiful. Equally, you need to be friendly, sympathique. It's very important to be able to put people at their ease. It's a world, someone's face. When I capture it, I see the future of the world. I believe with my heart and soul in the power of the image, but you also have to be sociable. I'm lucky. It's in my nature."

Sidibé was born in Mali in 1936, where he was based. His work has been exhibited extensively. In 2012, the DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, organized an exhibition titled Studio Malick in collaboration with Gwinzegal/diChroma Photography that traveled to Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Florida, and to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Spring 2014. In 2008, a solo exhibition was organized by Fotografiemuseum (FOAM), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It traveled to Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur Saone. Both solo exhibitions were accompanied by catalogues. In 2008, his work was also shown at the University Art Gallery at the University of San Diego, California

Sidibé has work in numerous public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Getty Museum, California, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. He was awarded the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement (2008), the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award by the Board of La Biennale di Venezia (2007) when he was included in Think with the Senses Feel with the Mind, curated by Robert Storr at the 52nd Annual Venice Biennale, and the Hasselblad Award (2003).

David P. Gilkey (January 5, 1966 - June 5, 2016) was a U.S. photojournalist for National Public Radio in the United States, for whom he covered disasters, epidemics and war.

It was originally reported that Gilkey and his native Afghan handler Zabihullah Tamanna were both killed during the War in Afghanistan by a rocket grenade while covering a skirmish between the Taliban and Afghan forces in the vicinity of Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. One year after their deaths, NPR clarified that a firefight with troops loyal to a Taliban leader named Mullah Ismail - not to be confused with another Mullah Ismail of the Taliban - had occurred while the reporters were on convoy and Tamanna was killed by gunfire and Gilkey by burns with smoke inhalation.

Photographer Fred Ward - who captured intimate moments at the White House with Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford—died last week, from Alzheimer's disease, says his daughter, Lolly Ward. He was 81.

Following the Kennedy assassination in 1963, Ward captured the affecting image of Jacqueline Kennedy returning to Washington with her husband's blood on her legs. Days later, his image of the grieving first lady with her two young children before her husband's casket, would appear on the cover of Life Magazine - a photo that Andy Warhol turned into an iconic print of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Over five decades, Ward traveled to more than 130 countries on assignment for TIME, Newsweek, Life, and National Geographic.He piloted experimental aircraft and his own helicopter, as well as underwater diving. He photographed pop star icons, including the Beatles' first American concert.

Elaine Ling was an exuberant adventurer, traveler, and photographer who was most at home backpacking her view camera across the great deserts of the world and sleeping under the stars. Born in Hong Kong, Elaine Ling has lived in Canada since the age of nine. Upon arrival in Canada, Elaine was exhilarated by the freedom of space and began her attraction to Stone and places of Nature. She studied the piano, the cello and medicine. Since receiving her medical degree from the University of Toronto, she has practiced family medicine among various First Nations peoples in Canada's North and Pacific Northwest as well as on the other side of the world, in Abu Dhabi and Nepal.

Seeking the solitude of deserts and abandoned architectures of ancient cultures, Elaine Ling has explored the shifting equilibrium between nature and the man-made across four continents. Photographing in the deserts of Mongolia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Timbuktu, Namibia, North Africa, India, South America, Australia, American Southwest; the citadels of Ethiopia, San Agustin, Persepolis, Petra, Cappadocia, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, Great Zimbabwe, Abu Simbel; and the Buddhist centres of Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Tibet, and Bhutan; she has captured that dialogue.

Ling's photographs, widely exhibited and published, are in the permanent collections of numerous museum and private collections including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt, Germany; Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark; Centro Portugues de Fotografia, Porto, Portugal; Scavi Scaligeri International Centre of Photography, Verona, Italy; Fototeca de Cuba, Havana; Lishui Museum of Photography; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Brooklyn Museum, New York; SE Museum of photography, Florida, the Cleveland

In Canada, Ling is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ryerson University, Art Gallery of Ontario, Royal Ontario Museum, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Her international publications include work in View Camera, Photo Technique International, The Polaroid Book, Italian Zoom Magazine, Orion Magazine, Viktor Magazine, BMJ and Aperture.

David Hamilton (15 April 1933 - 25 November 2016) was a British photographer and film director best known for his photography of young women and girls, mostly in the nude.His signature soft focus style was called the "Hamilton Blur", which was erroneously thought to be achieved by smearing Vaseline on the lens of his camera. It was not created that way. Hamilton's images became part of an "art or pornography" debate.

In October 2016, French presenter Flavie Flament accused him of raping her in 1987, when she was 13 years old. In November 2016, French magazine L'Obs published anonymous accounts from three other former models claiming to have been raped by Hamilton. Hamilton issued a statement threatening legal action against his accusers and affirmed that he did not do anything wrong. On 25 November 2016, he was found dead in his Paris apartment by apparent suicide.