Eugene Richards is a New York-based documentary photographer who was born in Massachusetts in 1944. His highly personal work is intended as a means of raising social awareness and has been both exhibited and published numerous times. His first book, Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta, depicting rural poverty in Arkansas, was published in 1973. After that, Richards worked as a freelance editorial photographer for such publications as LIFE, National Geographic, and the New York Times Magazine. His other books include Dorchester Days (1978), a portrait of the racially torn neighborhood where he was born; Exploding Into Life (1986), which chronicles his wife Dorothea’s struggle with breast cancer; Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue (1994), a study of the impact of hardcore drugs on inner city neighborhoods; Stepping Through the Ashes (2002), an elegy to those who lost their lives in New York on September 11, 2001; The Fat Baby (2004), a collection of fifteen photographic essays produced both on and off assignment; A Procession of Them (2008), which documents the mistreatment of the world’s mentally disabled; and most recently, The Blue Room (2008), a study of the abandoned and forgotten houses of rural America.

See more of Eugene Richard’s work on his website at eugenerichards.com.

There is also a good interview with him on shutterbug.com.