Born in Belgium in 1941, Harry Gruyaert studied photography and film-making. He made a few films as director of photography for Flemish television before turning to color photographs in his adopted Paris in the early 1960s. In the early 1970s, while he was living in London, he worked on a series of color television screen shots later to become the TV Shots now part of the Centre Pompidou collections. Around the same period he also photographed his homeland and produced two books, Made in Belgium and Roots.

In 1982, he joined Magnum Photos. Among other importants works, the two editions of Rivages (Edges), published in 2003 and 2008, are the testimony of how Gruyaert likes to work in different environments, with contrasting lights and colours. He is currently based in Paris.