Eugene Richards

The Arkansas Delta has been called at different times the soul of the South, the land of opportunity, a place ruled by race, a forgotten place. Eugene Richards (born 1944) first went to the delta as a VISTA volunteer in 1969. It was less than a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a time when cotton, religion, prejudice and poverty were what characterized most peoples' lives. Increasingly drawn to this both sorrowful and beautiful place, Richards would stay for more than four years, working as a social worker and reporter until the community service organization and newspaper he helped found were forced to close their doors. But over the years he would keep returning. Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down is a book that speaks of remembrance and change, of struggle and privation, of loving and loss, of then and now. Black-and-white photographs made long years ago but never before published are interwoven with recent color photographs and, in turn, with a short story that relates Richards' relationship with an impoverished delta family as well as a growing awareness of his own aging and mortality.

This is a compelling portrait of three communities blighted by drugs and isolation: East New York, North Philadelphia, and the Red Hook housing projects in Brooklyn, New York. With a chilling and informative afterword by Dr. Stephen W. Nicholas, a pediatric AIDS physician in Harlem, Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue reveals how first steps toward solutions to overcome the drug trade have actually contributed to public denial and further isolation of the trapped communities. Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue is a history of our times, a terrifying document that will educate us and promote dialogue.

"Eugene Richards's wrenching photographic study of the culture of cocaine in three inner-city neighborhoods gives faces to some of the victims of addiction. It provides a shocking and heartrending picture of the damage inflicted by the drug."

--Charles Hagen, The New York Times

"Eugene Richards's seventh book, Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue, reaffirms his position as the premier chronicler of the dark side of American life ˜ he is the true heir to the mantle of the legendary W. Eugene Smith."

--American Photo

Steppping Through the Ashes is a photographic elegy to those who died on September 11, and a portrait of how people are coping in the wake of the terrorist attack on New York. Many photographers have recorded the devastation, but Eugene Richards transcends description to offer instead a way of coming to terms with this tragedy. Interviews with survivors and victims' relatives complement Richards' beautiful and poignant images. It may be the best photo book yet on those hard days.
--Albuquerque Journal

Richards is arguably the most empathetic photographer working when it comes to showing the hard parts of people's lives... Once again, Richards has wrought a personal elegy for those who are just learning to cope with what has happened to them.

--New Yorker