Eugene Richards: The blue Room

Despite his success in other fields, Richards remains best known for his books and photo essays on cancer, drug addiction, poverty, emergency medicine, the mentally disabled, aging, and death in America. His intense vision and unswerving commitment have led him to become what many believe is America´s greatest living social documentary photographer. This new body of work, entitled The Blue Room, is one of Richards´ most personal works to date. It his is first-ever color project, and it brings together the overarching themes of all his work ´´the transient nature of things´´ in a beautiful and moving series of pictures of the landscape and abandoned houses of the American West, covering the states of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Arkansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and the Dakotas. This is the area where settlers came around the turn of the twentieth century, pursuing the promise of homesteads where they could build successful communities. However, in the wake of the Great Depression and the dust storms of the 1930s, the farms in this isolated, semi-arid region faltered and failed, leaving the land littered with forgotten homes.