Behind the Lens: Eugene Richards

The photographer shares images and stories from his retrospective Eugene Richards—The Run-On of Time, on ICP’s Instagram feed.
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Museum
Jan 24, 2019
The photographer shares images and stories from his retrospective Eugene Richards—The Run-On of Time, on ICP’s Instagram feed.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Eugene Richards (@EugeneRichardsPhotography) is one of the most respected photographers of his generation. Throughout his nearly 50-year career, he has confronted difficult subjects with an impassioned honesty that can be challenging, lyrical, beautiful, and melancholy. At the tail-end of 2018, our social media manager, Michael Mooney (@DoctorMooney) sat down with Eugene at his home in Brooklyn for ICP's Behind the Lens series. To celebrate "Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time" this week, we will be posting one photograph per day here on Instagram—the exhibition is on view at the #ICPMuseum through Sunday, January 20. “On this particular day, I had a job at Gleason’s gym in Dumbo. I walked up the street and saw them. I was tired and know I’m going to say can I photograph you when there’s a bunch of kids here and they’re going to say no. Then I’m going to feel worse than I already do. So I went right past it. I went up to the subway and thought it was so beautiful. I thought for Christ's sake, turned around and came back down the hill. By that time, the grandmother was on the way to the wading pool. I asked if I could photograph [her] and then the little girl took a bucket of water and threw it at me. We had a good laugh and that was it. I photographed 20 or 30 frames because it was just so cool. Everybody knows what water does, but I never actually thought that it would come out in the picture, but you could see it. It was really hot, it was like 95. Afterwards, I took off my shirt—everything was soaked anyway—and got in the hydrant. It was really nice.” Eugene Richards, Grandmother, Brooklyn, 1993

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“In this photograph [of Mariella], she’s tying off her arm; she was becoming profoundly desperate when shooting drugs. In her case, she didn’t stop me and she could of. The photograph upset her tremendously, it appeared on the cover of the book. She said she was fine with the photographs because [that was] what was really happening. But she wishes she hadn’t become the poster girl for the book. She would later say that seeing this picture was a first step for her in cleaning up. And she did get off drugs, for years. Though I recently came to learn that she has relapsed. I had come to deeply care for Mariella, so this bit of news still hurts. Almost everything I shot at that time was with a 21mm—and that’s with a bounce flash. My purpose in moving in so close was to address the very horror of hard-core addiction, the drive to shoot-up.” Eugene Richards, Mariella, East New York, Brooklyn, 1992 (@EugeneRichardsPhotography)

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“Dorothea and I met early on in college. We were totally different, that’s what drew us together. She was beautiful, an ethereal poet—she was highly articulate and I was less so. So we made a perfect couple. Just as things began to loosen up work-wise—the Dorchester book came out, I was invited to join Magnum— our world came apart. Dorothea was diagnosed with breast cancer. And that began a long struggle. This photograph was made during the last chemo treatment. I think it was at that point there was a consciousness that this is not going to work. The cancer basically kept coming back and coming back. You can hope for the best, but you know that it’s not going to happen. That’s the picture where you can see it in her eyes that, that’s it. We lost her in January of ‘83. A lot of people don’t know that we got married in the hospital. We lost her just a few hours after that.” Eugene Richards, Final treatment, Boston, 1979 (@EugeneRichardsPhotography)

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“The paramedics drove me nuts. They put me in the back of the ambulance and told me to shut up and they harassed me for a number of days. Then after three or four days, things started to change. The paramedics knew I wasn’t searching for the negative, things that could hurt them. I thought they were heroic. So this is the kind of photograph that could cause some trouble because that’s a syringe being jammed into the bench of an ambulance, they were in a hurry to help this man. It’s very dangerous photographing in an ambulance, it’s moving and people have been very hurt. We got hit once and the ambulance tipped over. It’s a very limited space and there’s not much you can do. It’s difficult because the patient is in pain and nobody wants a camera in their face. So it’s the worst kind of situation to make pictures of. I went from hating the place to absolutely loving the place. I spent too much time in cancer hospitals with Dorothea, so it was raw. It was so strange to go from people trying to kill each other in Beirut to a place where people were saving each other. I love the fact that no matter who the hell you were they took care of you. I was forced to leave when Peter Rosen, the monumental and kind Director of Emergency Medicine left the hospital. The hospital’s PR department did not welcome me back. When the book came out the staff of the ER, docs, nurses, paramedics, hosted the book party out on the ambulance ramp. It was the nicest party I ever attended. It was a wonderful time, it was a long time ago.” Eugene Richards, Syringe, Denver, 1987 (@EugeneRichardsPhotography)

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“My meeting with Robert Frank was all accidental. I did the self-published Dorchester book. As I remember it, I got a call from someone living in Boston saying that Robert Frank has your book. And I thought he was teasing me. Yeah sure, he has my book. Turns out one store in Cambridge was the only store that sold it. He was giving a talk, I think it was at MIT, but I went there and all I wanted to see was Robert Frank with my book. I wasn’t about to go up to say hello to him, but people pushed me forward. He was very soft and sweet and he said to me, ‘I like your book. Let’s get dinner.’ I don’t want to exaggerate, but I couldn’t get dinner with him I had no money. I was embarrassed and told him that I can’t do it right now. I said I gotta go home, and he asked where do you live. I told him Dorchester and he said that I’ll come to your house. He came that night to my house. All I remember about the night is that he flirted with Dorothea and we bought some cheap B & B kind of stuff for a few dollars. And, we had a big thing of ice cream and took some spoons and everybody ate out of the ice cream jar. I don’t think we talked about pictures. So over the years, I saw him periodically. This picture happened because I received an assignment for the New York Times, they were doing a cover story on him. I said to give it to somebody else because I never photographed Frank and I know what he’s like and he doesn’t like to be photographed. I had a hard time photographing him. The Times Magazine picture editor, Kathy Ryan asked me to go back a second day and that’s when this picture happened. Janine was with me and I could hear them in the back telling jokes and then Pablo came out. I knew it right when it happened; it was one or two frames. The irony is, to me, is that the New York Times writes it’s one of their classic pictures, but they never ran it. It wasn’t in the article. I brought it back to Frank in one of the dumber moments of my life. I gave it to him and told him that I have a nice photo of you and Pablo. And he said to me, it’s not nice, but it’s true." Eugene Richards, Robert Frank and his son Pablo, New York, 1994 (@EugeneRichardsPhotography)

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