Photoville

Eugene Richards
Eugene Richards
Eugene Richards
Eugene Richards

The Arkansas Delta has been called the soul of the South, a place ruled by race, a forgotten place. Eugene Richards first went there in 1969, a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a time when cotton, religion, prejudice, and poverty characterized most people’s lives. Increasingly drawn to this beautiful, sorrowful place, Richards would stay for four years, until the community service organization and newspaper he helped found were forced to close. But over the years he would keep returning. Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down speaks of life in the Arkansas Delta forty years go and today. Black-and-white photographs made long years ago are interwoven with recent color photographs and, in turn, with a short story.

Artist Bios

  • Eugene Richards

    Eugene Richards

    Eugene Richards, an editorial photographer, filmmaker, and writer, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He published his first book, Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta in 1973. Richards’s subsequent books include Stepping Through the Ashes (2002), an elegy to those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001; The Fat Baby (2004), a collection of fifteen photographic essays produced both on and off assignment; A Procession of Them (2008), which chronicles the plight of the world’s mentally disabled, The Blue Room (2008), a study of the forgotten and abandoned houses of rural America; War Is Personal (2010), a chronicle of the human cost of the Iraq war; and Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down (2014).

    Among numerous honors, Richards has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kraszna-Kraus Book Award, the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award for coverage of the disadvantaged.

Organizations

  • Many Voices

    Many Voices

    Many Voices is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization, founded in 1999, with the intent of producing books and films on contemporary social issues.

     

  • United Photo Industries (UPI)

    United Photo Industries (UPI)

    United Photo Industries (UPI) is a New York based nonprofit organization that works to promote a wider understanding of, and increased access to, the art of photography.

    Since its founding in 2011, UPI has rapidly solidified its position in the public art landscape by continuing to showcase thought-provoking, challenging, and exceptional photography from across the globe. In its first seven years, UPI has presented the work of more than 2,500 visual artists in gallery exhibitions and public art installations worldwide.

Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down

 archive : 2015

Featuring: Eugene Richards

Curated by: Eugene Richards Sam Richards

Presented by: Many Voices, United Photo Industries (UPI)
  • Many Voices
  • United Photo Industries (UPI)

Locations

View Location Details Download a detailed map of this location Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza

1 Water St
Brooklyn, NY 11201

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Related Events

Sep 202015

The American Dream: Documenting Economic Inequality in America

This panel gathers veteran photographers who have made it their life’s work to document stories of poverty and inequality with empathy, depth and curiosity. Motivated by their personal experiences in economically depressed areas, they explore and illustrate what economic inequality looks like in the U.S.

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Sep 262014

For the Love of Books: Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down

In his presentation, Richards will show excerpts from earlier self-published works, among them Dorchester Days (1978), a study of the inner city neighborhood where he was born, and War is Personal (2010), a chronicle of the consequences of the Iraq War. He will then discuss the motivations, struggles, and joy of creating his deeply personal new book.

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