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Jim Richardson
2007 Kansan of the Year
Jim Richardson is
an American photojournalist working for the National Geographic
Society and as a social documentary photographer recognized
for his explorations of small-town life and rural landscapes.
He is one of the society's most productive contemporary photographers.
As a contract photographer for National Geographic Magazine
and a contributing editor of National Geographic TRAVELER, he
has researched and produced a combined 30 stories since his
first assignment was published in 1984.
Richardson teaches photography workshops in
the US and abroad. He ialso speaks about exploring the world
through travel and about small-town leadership qualities as
applied in larger settings. Although he has traveled worldwide
for the society -- from the tops of active volcanoes to below
ancient swamp -- Richardson has developed special expertise
in the people, history and landscape of the Celtic world, including
his family's native Cornwall in England, from which both his
mother's and father's families emigrated to Kansas.
In his work, Richardson regularly calls upon
his Kansas roots. Most recently he proposed and later photographed
an April 2007 landscape story for National Geographic Magazine
about the state's Flint Hills area. Richardson's Flint Hills
photographs are now traveling through 2009 in a 32-piece exhibit
sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the Kansas division
of Travel and Tourism, and Epson. In May 2004, National Geographic
shared with its nine million readers a retrospective of Richardson's
30 years of documentary photography in Cuba, Kansas, population
230. Richardson's ongoing work in Cuba has been profiled twice
by CBS News Sunday Morning, first in 1983 and again on May 9,
2004.
His work in rural Kansas also has toured worldwide
as an audio-visual production called "Reflections from
the Wide Spot in the Road," which won the international
Crystal AMI Award. Richardson also is known for his first book,
High School USA (St. Martin's Press, 1979), a three-year photographic
examination of adolescence at Rossville (KS) High School. The
book is widely considered a photodocumentary classic and is
used in high school and university classrooms to teach the documentary
method. Richardson is a spokesman for the power of well-researched
photography. In 2001, ABC News Nightline followed Richardson
in the field and during editing and layout at National Geographic
Society headquarters in Washington, D.C. for a story called
"Yellow Journalism: The Making of a National Geographic
Story."
Richardson was born in Belleville on December
5, 1947, the son of Ralph and Elizabeth "Beth" Richardson
who owned a small wheat and dairy farm north of town. He began
using his father's second-hand box camera as a youngster, photographing
the world of the farmstead. He developed negatives in the family
kitchen and won awards at the Republic (KS) County Fair. In
1969, he abondoned a psychology major at Kansas State University
to begin a photographic internship at the Topeka (KS) Capital-Journal,
where he continued to work until 1979. While in Topeka, Richardson's
work also was published in many major publications, ranging
from LIFE and Time to Sports Illustrated and The New York Times.
After a brief stint at the Omaha (NE) World-Herald, Richardson
worked as a roving Western states photographer for The Denver
Post until departing in 1986 to begin a full-time contract photography
career that continues today.
He is a Nikon "Legend of the Lens"
and is represented by National Geographic Image Collection and
the picture agency Corbis. Richardson and his wife Kathy returned
to their native Kansas in 1997, having lived 18 years in Denver.
they now live in Lindsborg, Kansas, where they operage Small
World: A Gallery of Arts and Ideas on the town's Main Street.
Richardson's website is www.jimrichardsonphotography.com
and the gallery's website is www.smallworldgallery.net.
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