« This rushed race to the scenes of blood and disaster is something that I can understand, but in which I don't want to participate ».
In collaboration with the Gamma agency, she has traveled the planet and published numerous reports on the major conflicts of the past fifty years. First Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, then in northern Chad from 1975 to 1977, Marie Laure de Decker continued her career as a photo-reporter in the USSR, China, Mozambique .
Then from 1985 she made many trips to South Africa and had the opportunity to take portraits photographs of Nelson Mandela.
In order to look after her two sons she decided to switch to fashion photography, at a time when publicity was a big business she took many portraits of personalities like Orson Welles, Charlotte Rampling, Jacques Prévert, Marguerite Duras, Serge Gainsbourg , Marguerite Yourcenar...
She also shot films sets for Maurice Pialat "Van Gogh" ,« Under the sun of Satan ”, Otar Iosseliani's films and Regis Wargnier’s film « Indochina » with Catherine Deneuve.
She made many portraits of politicians, acteurs and auteurs : Fellini, Man Ray, Duchamp, Orson Welles, Gilles Deleuze, Francois Mitterrand, Pierre Jean Jouve, Patrick Modiano, Jacques Chirac, Gabriel Marcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Claude Levi-Strauss etc .
Marie Laure de Decker is one of the leading contemporary French photographers. Famous museums have dedicated various retrospective exhibitions to her work, being recognised internationally.
After Sarajevo during the war, from 1995, she moved to the Tarn and pursued her career, finding her ideal among the Wodaabe, a Fulani nomadic people of southern Chad, to whom she devoted numerous yet unpublished reports