"People think you have the definitive answer because it's a picture. There is no definitive answer. There are only more questions," renowned photojournalist Eugene Richards said as he introduced a brief retrospective of his work to a packed audience in the Cabot Auditorium last night.
Richards presented slides from many of his books, along with three short documentary films, and discussed the evolving nature and role of photojournalism.
Photographs, Richards said, have the ability to call attention to critical issues, inform the public and contribute to discourse.
"A photo is a tool for dialogue. It can create conversation and provide information if people will use it," he said, especially when used to portray areas most affected by the socio-economic factors that cripple or marginalize a populace.
"There is a trend now to do things faster, to make pictures more metaphorical and less direct ... more generic and less specific. There is less direct confrontation in photojournalism today," he said.
As he commented on slides, Richards spoke about a lesson learned early on in his career as a journalist for a small Arkansas newspaper, Many Voices - that there is a tendency to romanticize tragedy. He emphasized the limitations of photojournalism. "People have taken my photos and flipped them around," he said. "Photos cannot tell the whole story, they give us hints."
Richards also focused on the ideal role of photography in society. Exemplifying a series of photos confronting breast cancer, he expressed frustration that hospitals in the late 1970s would not allow him to photograph patients. "No one wanted to see these images, except women with breast cancer. The women wanted to know the truth."
"It could be you," Richards said, adding that the objective of photojournalism is to show images that people can identify with. "Recognition, that's the goal."
Photography is "not always something you put on the wall," he said in reference to his self-published book Dorchester Days. "I don't think of myself as an artist, I never have."
In recent years Richards has moved away from strictly still photography and into the realm of documentary films, adding sound and voice interviews to photo montages. He showed three films entitled "A Procession of Them," "Stepping Through the Ashes," and "War is Personal," about a mental institution in Mexico, the aftermath of Sept. 11, and an American soldier's return from Iraq, respectively.
Richards has published 13 books on a wide variety of topics, and his images have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, TIME, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Fortune and LIFE. He has also received numerous awards for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts grants.
Richards is a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and earned a degree in English and journalism from Northeastern University before studying photography at M.I.T.
Richards was invited by EXPOSURE, Tufts' photojournalism club, in partnership with the Institute for Global Leadership.
