Dorchester, une époque

Eugene Richards is one of America's greatest living social documentary photographers. His intense vision and unswerving commitment to documenting the plight of the disadvantaged has produced powerful work on topics such as drug addiction, poverty, the mentally disabled, ageing and the personal consequences of war. The Blue Room is his first colour project, a moving, highly personal project that brings together the themes that encompass all of Richards' work - what he describes as the 'transient nature of things'. The photographs are portraits of the abandoned and forgotten houses of western America in areas such as the plains of Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico and the Dakotas. In the early twentieth century, railroads lured settlers west with the promises of homesteads and towns rose across the plains. But in the wake of the Depression and the dust storms of the 1930s the towns faltered then failed. Richards enigmatic photographs of these forgotten homes are a meditation on memory and loss - family photographs stuck on a wall, a wedding dress hanging in a bedroom, snow falling on a bed by an open window, a wild horse standing at an open kitchen window. Richards' contemplative, beautiful photographs inspire us to imagine the lives of the former occupants, and make a quiet statement on the inevitability of the circle of life and death, and the vulnerability of man in the face of shifting economic opportunities and the climate.

The blue room

An exquisitely somber portrait of Brooklyn's Green-Wood cemetery across the seasons

In March 2020, after suffering from a severe bout of Covid, Eugene Richards sought out a safe place to walk and recuperate, and became entranced with Brooklyn's much-loved Green-Wood Cemetery. Founded in 1837 and proclaimed a National Historic Landmark in 2006, the 487-acre burial ground and arboretum is the final resting place of more than 550,000 people. Over the subsequent years, Richards made nearly 100 visits to Green-Wood, photographing both poetical details and grand vistas in rich color, across the seasons and in all weather, creating lyrical images of snowbound headstones, grand mausoleums, intimate epitaphs, the encroachments of moss on stone and the wear of time on all things. The photographs in Remembrance Garden were taken between April 2020 and September 2023. Richards intersperses his images with names and dates inscribed on grave markers and deeply personal memories, creating a grand and moving portrait of the legendary cemetery.
Photographer, writer and filmmaker Eugene Richards was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1944. Following college and studies with photographer Minor White, Richards joined Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and was sent to Arkansas, where he helped found a social service organization and a community newspaper, Many Voices. After publishing his first books?Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta and Dorchester Days?Richards began a 40-year career as a freelance editorial photographer and artist, producing a wide range of stories about the human condition in America and abroad. He has authored 17 photographic and textual books, including Exploding into Life, The Knife and Gun Club, War Is Personal, The Blue Room and, most recently, In This Brief Life. He directed and shot seven short films, including The Rain Will Follow and Thy Kingdom Come. Richards has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award and the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for Photographic Innovation.

Eugene Richards : Remembrance garden

Le gros bébé est un recueil d'histoires poignantes, souvent polémiques, racontées en mots et en images par Eugene Richards, célèbre photographe documentaire dont l'œuvre interroge les réalités sociales de notre temps. Fruit de douze années de reportages, répondant à des commandes ou à l'initiative du photographe, ces histoires, variées dans leur style et leur ton, nous plongent dans le
quotidien de planteurs de café au Honduras, de membres d'un gang de Kansas City, de villageois du Niger anéantis par la sécheresse, de médecins d'un hôpital de guerre en Bosnie. Elles racontent la
naissance d'un premier enfant, une violence familiale à son apogée, la lutte d'une famille de fermiers pour rester sur la terre de ses ancêtres et l'exhumation d'une tombe à demi enfouie censée contenir la dépouille d'un esclave. Reconnu pour sa sensibilité visuelle aiguë, parfois tranchante, et la justesse de ses textes, Eugene Richards écrit pour saisir la complexité du monde qu'il observe. Il mêle textes et photographies pour relater des histoires fortes, témoigner du destin des individus et éclairer notre époque. Personnel et d'une surprenante diversité, Le Gros Bébé atteste du pouvoir émotionnel de la photographie et rend hommage au genre narratif.

Dorchester, une époque

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