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Collection Data
- Description
- Richard Saunders (1922-1987) was a Black photojournalist, who primarily covered Black communities in the United States, and later Africa and the Middle East. Most of the collection is from Saunders' time as a lead photographer for the United States Information Agency where he photographed and interviewed for Topic, a magazine distributed in Africa. The collection contains material related to his photographic assignments, including negatives, contact sheets, prints, captions, and notes.
- Names
- Saunders, Richard, 1922-1987 (Photographer)
- United States Information Agency (Creator)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1940 - 2008
- Library locations
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division
- Shelf locator: Sc Photo Portfolio (Saunders, R.), SCP 186130
- Topics
- Farmer, James L., Jr. (James Leonard), 1920-1999
- X, Malcolm, 1925-1965
- African American photographers
- African Americans -- Civil rights
- Documentary photography -- Africa
- Documentary photography -- Middle East
- Harlem (New York, N.Y.)
- Photographers
- Genres
- Photographs
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Richard Saunders was a Black photojournalist born in Bermuda in 1922. He moved to the United States with his family in 1930, where he developed an interest in photography. When his family moved back to Bermuda during the outbreak of World War II, Saunders found a job in a friend's camera store, and briefly as a police department photographer.
Saunders relocated to New York City in 1945, where he studied photography at Brooklyn College and humanities and sociology at the New School for Social Research. In New York, Saunders befriended the photographer Gordon Parks, who helped him secure a job as a photographic lab technician. In the late 1940s, Saunders started taking photography assignments from the photo agency Black Star. Saunders' first published photograph was an Ebony magazine cover depicting his wife, Emily Saunders (formerly Wilson). Emily Saunders was a seamstress and also often worked as Richard's assistant.
In 1951, Saunders was asked to join a group of photographers selected by Roy Stryker to document Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during its period of deindustrialization for the Pittsburgh Photographic Library at the University of Pittsburgh. Stryker, formerly of the Information Division of the Farm Security Association, had managed several large projects where he would employ and mentor photojournalists. Stryker encouraged photojournalists to be both knowledgeable and compassionate about their subjects. For two years, Saunders lived with and photographed Black families in the Lower Hill District, a major cultural center for the Black community of Pittsburgh. Saunders documented the area from 1955 until 1960, a time period when buildings in the Hill District were demolished to make room for a sports arena, displacing the community as a whole. This work was recognized by Life magazine, and he was awarded the Young Photographers Contest prize.
Throughout the 1950s to the early 1960s, Saunders took assignments from various publications, including Ladies Home Journal, Fortune, Ebony, and Look. Wanting to focus on socially conscious photo essay work, Saunders practiced as a freelance photographer in the 1960s. Some of his significant projects included photographing civil rights leaders Malcolm X and James Farmer. The pictures were subsequently printed in the New York Times and other major newspapers.
Saunders began his over twenty-year association with the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1967. He was hired as their international editor and photographer for Topic, the agency's magazine distributed in USIA outposts in Africa to promote American aid and cooperation. Saunders lived in Tunisia, and traveled throughout Africa and the Middle East taking photographs for Topic. While working in Africa and the Middle East, Saunders wrote articles and recorded interviews with different subjects. Saunders continued photographing in Africa until his retirement in 1986.
Richard Saunders died in Washington, D.C. in 1987. In the 1990s, Emily Saunders and Kay Reese began work on a book of Richard's photography, but the project was never published.
- Content: The Richard Saunders photographs contain material from the 1940s through the 1970s related to Saunders' career as a photojournalist. The files are arranged into five groups by project or assignment: the Pittsburgh Documentary Project; Freelance; Topic Assignments; Portfolio; and Portraits of Saunders. The first three groups reflect Saunders' career chronologically, following the Pittsburgh Documentary project from 1955 through 1961, his freelance work primarily in the 1960s, and his work for Topic magazine while living in Africa from 1967 through 1976. Saunders' Portfolio and Portrait files contain photographs from throughout his photography career.
The Pittsburgh Documentary Project is one unsorted folder of prints Saunders' made while working with Roy Stryker to document the deindustrialization of the Lower Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These photographs date from 1955 through 1961, but individual pictures have not been dated. These files contain solely black and white prints, without any negatives, slides, or contact sheets.
Saunders' Freelance files include prints, contact sheets, slides, negatives, and notes from the 1940s through 1967. Each project is arranged chronologically. The primary coverage during this period includes the photographs of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam in New York City and Washington, D.C. in the 1960s. Another large project from this period includes coverage of James Farmer and his work as the founder and Director of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). A significant assignment held here are a series of celebrity portraits for The New York Times in 1964 and 1965.
The majority of the material in this collection are assignments from Topic magazine. The files are ordered chronologically by the date Saunders photographed the story, which he numbered consecutively throughout the year. The files contain an assortment of negatives, contact sheets, slides, notes, and caption information. Very few enlarged prints are present in these assignment folders.
Some of the Topic assignments include profiles of individuals such as exiled South African journalist Nat Nakasa; Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty; photographer Moneta Sleet, Jr.; and James Brown's performance in Lagos, Nigeria in 1971. Saunders also covered the second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC '77) in Lagos, Nigeria in 1977.
Saunders' Portfolio contains prints from the 1940s through the 1970s, and provides an overview of his career and photographic eye. These prints are arranged chronologically by project, and several have been mounted on board.
Photographs of Saunders primarily include images of him working between the late 1960s and 1970s. There are also images of Saunders' equipment, and pictures of Saunders as a young man in the 1940s present. These photographs are ordered chronologically.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 7.58 linear feet (21 boxes)
- Type of Resource
- Still image
- Identifiers
- Other local Identifier: SCP 186130
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b23034187
- MSS Unit ID: 186130
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): dc259e20-405b-013c-fbc7-0242ac110003
