He was born into a Russian emmigrant family in Milan. He spent his childhood in Paris, in 1939 the family escaping from the Fascism moved to America. He started to deal with photography during his school years. He studied at the Los Angeles College in 1945-47. He worked as an assistant in a drugstore and a photo laboratory. In 1948-49 he studied film making at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1949 he moved to France and worked as a cameraman, he opened his own studio in Paris. A year later he moved back to New York and spent his military service from 1951 as the photographer of the American troops in Europe. From 1953 he worked as a freelance photographer in New York, his fashion and advertising photographs were published in the issues of Collier's, Look, Life, Holiday. From 1953 he worked for Magnum and directed it from 1966. He worked in Egypt, the Soviet Union, and Puerto Rico. From the end of the 60s he directed several documentaries for television, among others he made a portrait film on Dustin Hoffmann and Arthur Penn.

He had solo exhibitions from 1957 in Limelight Gallery (New York), Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Art Institute (Chicago), Photographers' Gallery (London), Canon Photo Gallery (Geneva).