Eugene Richards (1) (1944–)

Watching The Pitt has led me to read things I would never have sought out otherwise, that's for sure. This is a photojournalism project/oral history account of what it was like to work in the ER of Denver General Hospital in the late '80s. No hospital would ever now permit the kinds of photos that Eugene Richards includes here, and even to view some of them now, well, the ethics of them are debatable. It's both jarring to read the accompanying text and to see some of the things that were show more thought acceptable to say/do then (how the staff talk about gay/trans/non-white patients), amazing to see the developments in medical treatment (clearly no one thought a treatment/prophylaxis for HIV would ever be possible), and wild to see how little some things have changed (staff underpaid, overworked, self-medicating with alcohol and cigarettes). As a record of a time and place, this is a visceral read. show less

Hands down the most compelling and chilling photo documentary I've ever encountered. This images will haunt you. Eugene Richards captures the crack epidemic in three impoverished neighborhoods; Red Hook Housing Project, East New York, and North Philadelphia. The haunting photos of people shooting up, running from cops, sleeping in shacks, working the street, etc. are accompanied by dialogue from addicts, and people living in the neighborhoods. It's profoundly sad, many recount what bright show more futures they had, friends who were murdered, babies who were lost. It gets you right in the gut. This book forces you to pay attention to this horrific problem that plagues our country and cities.

If the pictures don't capture your attention, the statistics will.

"There were 107 murders, 145 rapes, 3,285 robberies, and 567 felonious assaults in East New York in one year, a population of 160,000."

"The United States accounts for 5% of the world's populations and consumes 50% of the world's cocaine."

"By 1990 in New York City... over 40,000 children were in foster care, approximately 90% of them born to drug using mother."

This book makes you open your eyes to the issue, and after viewing the images, you'll never be able to close them again. show less

Eugene Richards Looks Back
A review of the Many Voices Press hardcover (September 5, 2023).

Maybe it was because I was edging up in age; people that I'd come to know in this life and things I'd seen were weighing on me. Every day for months I slipped into the small room at the back of our house where my contact sheets were stored, and searched through them for pictures that I'd somehow overlooked over the years, had dismissed, had found difficult to look at, had forgotten.

I will often diverge show more from my planned reading and reviews and pick something out based on the curiousity aroused by an aspect of a current read. That was the case when my edition of Dennis Lehane's [book:Small Mercies|61812308] (2023) included a cover photograph showing what looks to be a young South Boston boy confronting mounted policemen during the Boston desegregation busing crisis (1974).
See the cover of Small Mercies at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/21/Small_Mercies_%282023_novel...

The photograph is credited to Eugene Richards (1944-) who is a native Bostonian from the south Boston Dorchester district. The photograph is likely from one of his earlier collections, but the Toronto Public Library had a loan copy of this 2023 retrospective so I picked that up instead.

In This Brief Life covers Richards entire career as a social activist documentary photographer. It contains what in the film world would be called out-takes from previously published collections. It goes as far back as [book:Few Comforts or Surprises: Arkansas Delta by Eugene Richards (29-Jun-1973) Hardcover|127624524] (1973) which collected 1970 photographs of rural poverty in Arkansas.

The book is mostly organized chronologically and contains Richards' further investigations into prisons, mental asylums, trauma and emergency wards, wounded veterans, crack houses or other drug dens in America. Some selections are from conflict zones in Europe or from drought zones in Africa. Often they are not easy viewing but each picture definitely tells a story. Richards provides brief descriptions and notes on the circumstances for each of them.

Most of the people pictured are regular farmers, patients, soldiers, prisoners, villagers, etc. The single exception is a photograph of [author:Robert Frank|48591] who published the seminal book of photographs of ordinary people and scenes in [book:The Americans|585707] (1958), and which was likely an inspiration for the young Richards.

The book is presented in oversize, so-called "coffee table" format, including a few dozen blank pages as if to provide a respite between some of the scenes of trauma or desperate circumstances. Overall a worthy career retrospective for the photographer.

Trivia and Links
A sampler video montage of the photographs from this book can be viewed at Vimeo which was done to promote the book's Kickstarter campaign. Ever since [book:Dorchester days|122833296] (1978), Richards has self-published his work under his own Many Voices Press imprint. show less