Previous Exhibit | Jim Richardson: Story Driven

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Throughout his 50-year career photojournalist Jim Richardson has pursued the hearts of issues and people’s lives, letting The Story direct his photography.

Richardson’s work has taken him around the world, covering environmental and resource issues related to water, food and agriculture, science, archeology and history. He is noted for using extensive research to create compelling visual stories about complex subjects. ABC News Nightline followed Richardson in the field and at National Geographic headquarters as he covered the Columbia River. His subjects ranged widely, from soil and the Neolithic Age to the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. His stories on the Tallgrass Prairie and light pollution had the greatest impact while his decades of work in Scotland gained a broad following.

In addition to his color photography, Richardson has built a distinguished body of black-and-white documentary work about rural Kansas life. His audiovisual presentation, “Reflections From a Wide Spot in the Road,” has toured internationally. His 40 years of photographing life in the Kansas town of Cuba, population 230, was published in National Geographic and featured twice by CBS News Sunday Morning. His 1979 study of adolescence, “High School USA,” is now considered a photo essay classic and is used in college classrooms.

Whether portraying generations of the Scottish experience, depicting the High School life or crafting a visual explanation of farmers’ relationship to the soil, Richardson adapts his approach to ensure that the story is effectively and honestly told.

Richardson’s work is exhibited in the McDougall Center Gallery through March 2023.

Man and a dog stands in front of a scenic background.
Former Laird of Muck, Lawrence MacEwan on Beinn Airein, the highest hill on the island. The island has ben in the hands of the MacEwan family since 1896, for four generations.
Large stones stand erected in a circle.
The Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Dating from the neolithic era.
A person presses their hand against a glass pane.
Mary Krasny at her kitchen door.
Elderly men sit around a table playing cards.
Pitch Players in the Mill Creek Tavern, Paxico, Kansas
A high school student runs a comb through her hair while sitting in a classroom.
High School USA
An aerial shot of the Hoover Dam.
Colorado River at Hoover Dam
A rainstorm moves across a green Kansas prairie.
Afternoon thunderstorm coming through the Flint Hills at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve near Strong City, Kansas.
A person sits with freshly harvested potatoes.
Potato Harvest in the high Andes of Peru.
Aerial view of green hills surrounded by fog.
Aerial of farmland in southwest Wisconsin near the Mississippi River, south of La Crosse. Farms surrounded by clouds along the ridges of the rich Loess bluffs along the Mississippi River.
Night sky filled with bright stars shines over a natural bridge of rock.
Natural Bridges National Monument in southeast Utah is the first International Dark Sky Preserve. Skies here are exceptionally dark and the Milky Way stands out as broad avenue in the sky.