Richards, Eugene: Americans We

Aperture

1994

First Edition

Richards dedicates this summary of his photojournalistic coverage of the bleakest aspects of our culture to Robert Frank, who in The Americans (1959) challenged American complacency with his vision of lost souls in a land of depressing shadows. Richards offers a frightening, chaotic vision of desperate poverty and ever present violence that makes Frank's pictures look almost nostalgic. Richards is a brilliant photographer whose trademarks are working extremely close to the subject and a kind of quirky framing that results in bizarre, riveting compositions; no one uses the edge of the frame more powerfully. Yet, this book is not wholly successful.