Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France, of a Scottish mother and a French father, Edouard Caron, an insurance company manager. A keen horserider, Gilles Caron briefly embraced a career in horse racing, before moving to Paris where he attended the lycée Jeanson de Sailly. He then moved on to study journalism at the École des Hautes Études Internationales, still in Paris.

He served his National Service in Algeria from 1959 as a paratrooper in the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment (3e RPIMa). After nearly 2 years fighting a war he opposed, Caron refused to fight after the Generals' putsch, an aborted coup d'état attempted by 4 former French generals in April 1961. As a result, he spent 2 months in a military prison before finishing his military service in 1962.

In 1964 Caron started working with Patrice Molinard, a fashion and advertisement photographer. In 1965 he joined the APIS (Agence Parisienne d'Informations Sociales) where he met Raymond Depardon, then working for Dalmas agency. It was during this period that he had his first major success as a photojournalist, with one of his photos illustrating the leading article of France Soir (February 21, 1966 issue, on the Ben Barka affair). After leaving the APIS and briefly working for a celebrity photography agency, he joined Depardon and the founders of the recently created Gamma agency in 1967.

For the next 3 years Caron covered most of the high-profile conflicts in the world in various countries.

In 1970 Gilles Caron went to Cambodia after king Norodom Sihanouk was deposed by Lon Nol on March 18, 1970. On April 5 he disappeared on a road between Cambodia and Vietnam controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.