“THE GRITTY, DOCUMENTARY TRADITION OF AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY”

RICHARDS, Eugene. Dorchester Days. (Wollaston, Massachusetts): Many Voices, (1978). Tall quarto, original stiff photographic wrappers. $1500.

First edition of Richards’ self-published photobook, a modern classic, featuring 75 striking duotones.

“During the 1970s Eugene Richards… upheld the gritty, documentary tradition of American photography… (fusing) the documentary and the political with the personal… a fusion, one might say, of W. Eugene Smith and Robert Frank… Richards’ involvement with those he is photographing is total, and he is one of the best of photojournalists in getting that across” (Parr & Badger II:30). In Richards’ photobook of his working-class neighborhood of Dorchester, “he set about creating a body of work that would bear witness to the time and place. This included racial conflict, the passing of the older generation, social alienation and urban decline. In 1978 he self-published Dorchester Days… [which] marked the beginning of his distinguished career” (New York Times). With a postscript by his wife Dorothea Lynch, whose death from breast cancer was chronicled in his 1986 photobook, Exploding into Life. First edition, published in wrappers only, issued without dustjacket. Open Book, 320. Owner inscription.

Images clean and fresh, lightest wear to spine of bright photographic wrappers; about-fine.