Click to Enlarge Eugene Richards
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Legendary photographer and social documentarian Eugene Richards’ photographs of abandoned homes across the Mid- and Southwest published as a book last year, Blue Room (Phaidon Press; $100), offers a unique capture of the remnants of old farm settlements in Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and the Dakotas. One of these photos was featured in Pop Photo’s November 2009 feature, “The Explorer’s Club”; below, Richards gives us more insight into his experience making the series.
What Is The History Of The Images In Blue Room?
It started back in 1989. I worked then for Life magazine, and I did a story about a doctor and farmer named Clarence Kaiser, who had this beautiful farm in Nebraska. Then later, after Kaiser passed away I went by his house in Nebraska. I noticed that the sign was still there, and I went in and found some of his belongings, including a bar of soap that was being eaten by insects, and I photographed it in color film. That's how the project started. After that every time I saw an abandoned house I would stop and take pictures.
And So Then It Became A Project...
I had no intention for a while of doing a long-term project. But I found it very meaningful, looking at the houses in a very different way. They really did start to evoke all kinds of memories: that were about your own family, or things that you know about the world, as much as the people who lived in these houses. When I showed these photos to a few people, the response was very positive.
Photographing Empty Places Seems Drastically Different From Most Of Your Work.
I usually do stories that are really confrontational. These had no people in them, which was really nice. Nobody pushing you around, and very quiet. It was meditative. The houses all had their own personalities. They could also be treacherous--you could fall through the floors. I wouldn’t go inside a house unless it had been broken into. It was easy to find houses where you could squeeze through the window, but then you really are trespassing, so [my] deal was that someone had to have been there before. Aside from occasionally, I was amazed how often I was in houses and didn’t see anyone. I got into the habit of having someone else keep their eyes on the road, and I would never go out.
How Long Would You Spend At Each Location?
The main thing was finding it. I maybe saw a thousand houses overall. Most had been profoundly trashed, graffitied up, or the walls ripped out, so there was really nothing left of the people who had lived there to photograph. And then when I found a house to photograph, it would last as long as I could stay in the house. Usually a couple of hours. I spent a lot of time working in the winter, in freezing temperatures. The photo of the doll is one that I took when it was 30 degrees below zero.
And then in summer, the houses have metal roofs and so it could get pretty hot.
How Did You Find Them?
Pretty randomly. South Dakota has a lot of houses. And people would have picked through them, but you could still find little elemental details. There, you could see them from the road. Other times you'd drive 200 miles a day with binoculars without finding anything. If there was barbed wire you couldn’t go in--you wouldn't want a farmer taking a shot at you because you were at your property.
It Seemed From The Notes That Some Of The Places Are Places You Had Been.
Not really, no. In the very beginning, of course, I visited Clarence's house. And then another time, I went down south to the Arkansas Delta region where I used to visit [and photograph] these sharecropper families--we had been pretty close as friends. When I revisited in 1986, the people I knew had left, had passed away or moved to Chicago. I went back and looking for a house that some of them had lived in, to photograph it. The house was gone and there was no sign, even the foundation was gone. While I was searching for it, a farmer came over and asked me what I was doing. And I said, “Well, a house was there.” It was definitely the right place. And he said that there had never been a house there, which was interesting, and odd. He said he was born in ‘35 or something like that, so he had to have known the houses as a kid. But often people won't acknowledge that there had been a row of what had once been slave houses—the sharecroppers would all tell me that they were descendants of slaves and this was where they were from.
Did You Get To Know People In The Places Where You Were Traveling?
Initially. It was interesting because in the beginning I would approach people who lived nearby, but I never got any information. Then I later worked with a writer, Chuck Bowden, [National Geographic], and he was able to find information about them. As a writer you have to concentrate and be very inquisitive. As a photographer, I've learned that if you ask too many questions--no one would believe that I'm just going out to these old houses to photograph. The few times I did meet people [who lived nearby], they assumed that I was looking for something valuable. And what’s interesting is that when I did find valuable things, I would tell them this—such as once, when I found this very beautiful old clock, and said, you should take this out before it rots away. But they never did. I took a few small things for memories but otherwise I felt uncomfortable with it. But occasionally I would find boxes of family photographs, that you would think that people should collect for their own history. They would never keep these either. There are people who just don’t want to go back in the past.
Did You Ever Find Out Why People Who Had Lived In These Houses Left?
You could sense it. You'd find boxes of bills. In North Dakota, there was a family I'm quite close to, who explained that in order to survive on a farm, you had to have a certain amount of anchorage. It was a matter of time to make a living--otherwise it was inevitable that you'd fail. There’s no way you can sustain yourself in a generational way on a small farm. People would go broke or else age and pass away, and the kids would know, and they'd leave. Their time came. And then, more dramatically, there were suicides. It seemed always to be the men who committed suicide but I can imagine the women, all alone all day, listening to the winds over the prairie grass. It's a long journey anywhere to socialize, and the houses are a distance apart. I can imagine the loneliness.
Then some places were a mystery. The house where I found the wedding dress. Those people, I think, were gone just twelve years, because I found the champagne glasses with the wedding dates. It was a nice house, but it had been broken into, and it was a matter of time before the wind and the rain came in and damaged the place.
Did You Discover Anything That You Weren't Expecting To Discover?
If you knew what was going to be inside of them you wouldn't go inside. That's the nice thing about being a photographer: Everything is strangely new for you. I was nervous at times. I was always afraid I'd find a body in there. I thought I did, a few times. There were so many dead animals. And live animals that would scare the hell out of you. One day, I was so exhausted from the heat that I lay down to rest, and I lay down, literally, right alongside a rattlesnake. We were just, neighbors. I only heard him because he moved a little bit—made the slightest ssssh sound--and I knew right away. I got up and he just slowly left and I took a picture of him as he was leaving the door.
In the end, I think the learning process is about yourself. For me, I think I made a transition of where I want to go more as a photographer now. I want to work a little bit more slowly and in a more of a meditative way. These days, I tend to think more about the past.
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