BOB RICHARDSON (1928 – 2005)
Bob Richardson captured the energy and darkness of the 60s and 70s youth culture, while leading a tumultuous life of his own. Cited by fashion photography giants such as Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, Deborah Turbeville and Peter Lindbergh as an influence on their own style and fashion photography in his time, Richardson didn't pick up a camera until his mid thirties, working first as a graphic designer. Bruce Weber was quoted as saying that "there is no textbook, no award, but there is this Bob Richardson school of photograph. And it's an anti school. He was the first guy who said it was O.K. to underexpose the film, to not show the clothes. So many photographers when I first started out idolized Bob. He was a sort of underground figure."
His son Terry Richardson, art historian Martin Harrison, and photographer Steven Meisel, among others, worked in the late 1980s and 1990s to restore his reputation as a pioneering photographer and to compile his archive, much of which had been lost. In the 1990s he was able to restart his career, shooting for magazines such as Italian VOGUE and British GQ.
Bob Richardson died in 2006, in the midst of working on his first monograph, Bob Richardson, which was later finished by his son Terry.