Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949, Greene was given his first camera when he was eleven years old. In 1971, when he was already a member of the Black Panthers and was taking part in the anti-Vietnam war movement, his friend W. Eugene Smith convinced him to study photography. It was only when a friend died from AIDS that Greene managed to overcome his own heroin addiction and concentrate on his photography career. He has received numerous awards for his photo journalistic work, receiving five World Press Photo Awards, the Eugene Smith Humanistic Grant and the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography. Greene was a member of the NOOR agency and lived in Paris until his death in 2017.
