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.
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.
Learn MoreThis 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.
Learn MoreIn 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.
Learn MoreThis website was made possible thanks to the generous support and partnership of 