Patrick Artinian was born in 1960 in Martigues, in southern France, and began his photographic career in 1985 as a regular contributor to the esteemed daily French newspaper Libération. While his primary focus was on domestic politics, he also covered the Armenian earthquake (1989), the famine in Sudan (1991), and the civil war in Bosnia (1993-1994). In 1995 he joined Contact Press Images, and with a new emphasis on color photography has since spent years documenting America through the eyes of a European at the turn of the century. In 2003, he photographed extensively the building of the Queen Mary II, the world's largest ship. He is a regular contributor to Le Monde, and to Télérama, the culture and television weekly. He is based in Paris.