Eugene Richards

Approaching people is not

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Approaching people is not – it’s ironic that it’s what I do – but it’s not necessarily what I enjoy doing. Later on, I’m fine. Once we get talking I have a great time but not in the beginning. Eugene Richards

I chose to be

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I chose to be a photographer twenty-two years ago, but I don’t know that I\’d make that choice again. Back in the early eighties, I still thought I was doing okay, trying to order and shape the world with my camera. Now that I know a bit more about living and dying, about our planet … Read more

There’s never a time

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There’s never a time that I’m not intrusive. That’s the base of what we – photographers – do: we’re intrusive. Anyone saying the opposite is silly. There’s a process and a means of getting to know people and getting them to trust you, but I\’m always very aware that I’m visiting – that I’m there, … Read more

Photojournalist? With a few

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Photojournalist? With a few exceptions, those of us working as photojournalists might now more appropriately call ourselves illustrators. For, unlike real reporters, whose job it is to document what’s going down, most of us go out in the world expecting to give form to the magazine, or to newspaper editor’s ideas, using what’s become over … Read more

…it is pretentious for

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…it is pretentious for photographers to believe that their pictures alone change things. If they did, we wouldn’t be besieged by war, by incidents of genocide, by hunger. A more realistic assessment of photography’s value is to point out that it is illustrative of what’s going on, that it provides a record of history, that … Read more