Martine Franck was born in Belgium and raised in England and the United States. Franck studied art history at the University of Madrid and the École du Louvre in Paris. Shortly afterward she launched her photographic career by assisting photographer Eliot Elisofson and Gjon Milli at Time-Life. Franck associated with several photographic agencies during her career including the Vu agency, which she joined at its start in 1970 and the Viva agency of which she was one of the founders. In 1980 Franck was one of four women to become a member of the forty-four member Magnum photo agency. Franck is also the widow of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and currently is the president of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson located in Paris.

Franck has five books in publication and her photographs are included in the countless private collections as well as the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and the Ministere de la Culture, Paris. 

Platinum prints are loved by photographers and treasured by collectors and investors because of their tonal range, the surface quality and their permanence. The unique beauty of a fine platinum print involves a broad scale of tones from black to white, unobtainable in silver prints. In the deepest shadows platinum prints still hold detail; the platinum whites are delicate and the depth of the image is alive and three-dimensional. Platinum prints are not only exceptionally beautiful, they are the most durable of all photographic processes. The platinum metals (platinum and palladium) are more stable than gold, and it is estimated that a platinum image, properly made, can last many hundreds of years.