Magnum Eye: Cocaine True Cocaine Blue

Eugene Richards made this film in North Philadelphia in 1990. He collaborated on a book by the same name with Edward Barnes. He filmed it with a conciseness, clarity and honesty that are his hallmark.

During the 1960s, Richards was a civil rights activist and VISTA volunteer. After receiving a BA in English from Northeastern University, his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were supervised by photographer Minor White.

Richards' published photographs are mostly intended as a means of raising social awareness, have been characterized as "highly personal" and are both exhibited and published in a series of books. The first book was Few Comforts or Surprises (1973),

a depiction of rural poverty in Arkansas; but it was his second book, the self published  Dorchester Days (1978), a "homecoming" to Dorchester, Massachusetts, where Richards had grown up, that won most attention. It is "an angry, bitter book", both political and personal. Gerry Badger writes that "[Richards's] involvement with the people he is photographing is total, and he is one of the best of photojournalists in getting that across, often helped by his own prose".

Richards has been a member of Magnum Photos and of VII. He lives in New York.