Eugene Richards; The Fat Baby - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071484196X ISBN 13: 9780714841960

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2004

Synopsis

The Fat Baby is an epic collection of poignant and often controversial stories photographed and written by acclaimed social documentary photographer Eugene Richards. The culmination of a dozen years of reporting, both on and off assignment, these stories, each one different in style and tone, immerse us in the lives of Honduran coffee growers, members of a Kansas City street gang, drought-plagued villagers from Niger, and doctors in an embattled Bosnian hospital. They chronicle the birth of a first child, an explosion of family violence, the struggle of a farming family to hang on to its ancestral home, and the unearthing of a half-hidden grave said to hold the remains of a slave.

Described as having an acute, sometimes hard-edged visual sensibility and a literary voice, Richards writes in order to come to terms with the complexities of what he is observing. At a time when photojournalists are often relegated to illustrating the ideas of others, he persists in interweaving his words and photographs to create boldly narrative stories that bear witness to the dramas of real lives and comment on the times in which we live. Deeply personal and prodigious in scope, The Fat Baby is a tribute to the emotional power of photography and a celebration of storytelling.

About this title

Review:

"It's clear his dedication to documenting the less glamorous side of modern society is not without great personal risk."―Metro

"Re-asserts the importance of the extended photo-essay."―AG

"An intense journey you feel compelled to take... Story after story, each one is an intensely confrontational and demanding rollercoaster ride. But neither is there any let up in pace or quality and that's what makes it so damn good... In each essay one gets the sense of a proper storyteller knowing what he wants to achieve and realising it... There won't be many more engrossing, dignified and profound photography books published in 2004, and probably for a few years yet."―Ei8ht Photojournalism

"Eugene Richards, 59, is one of the most respected American photojournalists, has photographed a couple of circles of Dante's hell and come back to tell the tale... Mr Richard's camera cuts a rude fragment from a scene, finding a jagged piece that concentrates its emotional force. He has honed a style that mirrors - with disjunctions, displacements, extreme croppings, surprises and surprising angles, and sometimes an almost unbearable in-your-face closeness - the shattered or merely alienated lives he often observes."―The New York Times

"This book provides evidence that Richards retains his position as one of the most important living photographers."―PhotoEye

"Richards has assembled here both published and unpublished stories, all of them fine examples of his uniquely raw, affecting photographic style... Richards's example... Reminds us that photojournalism that moves people requires courage from the photographer, not only the courage of putting oneself in harm's way, but the courage to truly connect with others and absorb their anguish. In this way, Richards has been among the bravest photojournalists of our time."―Photo District News

"A dazzling book full of life stories that swallow the reader whole... The term "best book of the year" is not one that should be used lightly. But when critics look back on 2004, The Fat Baby should be at the top of every list."―Digital Photographer

Synopsis:

The Fat Baby is a selection of 17 "stories" that photographer Eugene Richards (b. 1944), member of Magnum since 1981, has produced since the early 1990s. Working mainly as a photo-journalist, Richards has covered various events around the globe for different magazines since the early 1970s. Each of the stories selected for this book is composed of 2 to 20 photographs and a text, all by Eugene Richards. Altogether, these various stories compose the first comprehensive monograph on the work of the photographer since the early 1990s. The Fat Baby received his title from one of the stories included in this book, about a village in Niger hit by famine and where a baby was surprisingly born fat. Composed of black-and-white photographs and texts, this story, like all the other stories included in this book, is a photography-based piece to which Eugene Richards later added text, in order to narrate more precisely the event depicted in the photographs, and to share his own perception and memory of the event.

For this book Eugene Richards selected, out of all the photographs he shot since the early 1990s (whether assigned by a magazine or of his own initiative), 17 stories that are among the most significant to him. The topics of each story, as well as the geographical area each covers, vary widely, and range from gay parenthood in Arizona to a war hospital in Bosnia, from a youth homicide in Chicago to a mental institution in Mexico. Always grounded in social and/or humanitarian content, Eugene Richards's photographs are intense in emotions. He stresses the human emotions in each of them, without showing the misery. Eugene Richards does not, as many photo-journalists do, report bluntly and coldly the event he is witnessing. Rather, he gets involved in the event and with the people participating to the event he is about to shoot, and therefore shows his own perception, his own emotional involvement in the event. There is always a sort of autobiographical dimension in the way he chooses to show a story. Thus, his 1986 book Exploding into Life, that relates his wife's struggle with breast cancer, translates this interest in pursuing an autobiographical photo-journalism.

It is this unique way of working that beget the original concept of this book of combining Eugene Richards's own words with each of his photographic story. With this book one indeed discovers that Eugene Richards is not only a great photographer, but also a gifted writer, and his written stories narrate with equal emotion and strength his own journey into each of the events he shot. Therefore, each story is composed of 2 to 20 images, and of a text between 1,000 and 4,000 words long. Photographs and texts are therefore deeply connected (the photographs have no captions other than the text), and both are carefully entwined in the layout. The result is a breathtaking compilation of images that will stand as the most definitive publication on the photographer to date.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 071484196X
• ISBN 13: 9780714841960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432