Eugene Richards (born 1944, Dorchester, Massachusetts) is an American documentary photographer. Richards has published many volumes of photography and been a member of Magnum Photos and of VII Photo Agency.
War all comes down to these little tiny stories about people's lives that will never be the same.
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 and its complex problems, I'm a lot less comfortable with my images of people. Still, I haven't a clue what else to do.
It's a process of getting to know people. That's what photography is to me. It's about paying attention, not screwing up and blowing a great opportunity.
I'm often uncomfortable taking pictures, especially if people are grieving, or hurt, or hungry. At such times I have to remind myself that I'm a photographer and that this is my job.
My biggest problem is I'm so uninteresting that all these people forget I'm around.
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, that I have a responsibility, but I am intrusive.
. . . 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 photographs can prompt dialogue.
That's one of the troubles of photography; the implication that what you have in that photograph is the way it is, and of course a year later that's not the way it is. Life moves on and the picture stays. That can be a wonderful idea to be a part of history and on the other hand, you think pictures have a life that they don't have.
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 the years a pretty standardized visual language. So we search for what is instantly recognizable, supportive of the text, easiest to digest, or most marketable - more mundane realities be damned.
I can photograph someone if I can touch them.
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.