EUGENE RICHARDS

INsight Artist, 2007

“There are 91 boxes of photographs up there on the floor to ceiling shelves: photographs that have me wanting to return places; photographs that might make some people uncomfortable. ” —Eugene Richards

In The New York Times Magazine, Richard Woodward wrote about Richards’ unique relationship with his subjects: “The obvious trust that [his] subjects place in him explains in part his ability to view their lives from the inside—from their beds and bathrooms, as though he were a guest at the kitchen table or a member of the family.”

Photography’s most single-minded social documentarist, Eugene Richards, aims for immediate, intimate, unflinching access to victimized individuals.

Richards is best known for his books—he has authored thirteen—and photo essays on such diverse topics as breast cancer, drug addiction, poverty, emergency medicine, pediatric HIV and AIDS, the meat packing industry, the plight of the world’s mentally disabled, and aging and death in America.

Among numerous honors, he has won the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Olivier Rebbot Award twice, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award for coverage of the disadvantaged.