Harvey Richards (1912 - 2001)

Harvey Richards Media Archive Home is the gateway to video and photo images of the 1960s in twenty-two documentary films and 44 photo image galleries shot during the years from 1958 to 1978.

Harvey Richards chose sides. He was a movement photographer who used photo images to help the civil rights, peace, ecology and the labor movement causes he believed in. He worked on his own, independently, to advance these causes at the front lines of social conflict when the mainstream mass media was absent and hostile, which happened frequently especially in the early years of the 1960's. Together with his wife, Alice Richards and his son, Paul Richards, Harvey travelled to the USSR in 1961 to make documentary films on the conditions of women and children in a socialist society.

Self-Portraits of the Movements

His films became self-portraits of the movements he photographed. His civil rights films made in Mississippi in 1963 and 1964 offered share croppers unscripted opportunities to tell the world what their struggle for voting rights meant to them. His films on California farm workers contain farm worker voices. His environmental films started with Perch of the Devil made in Butte, Montana, in 1960 contains the miner's voices.

During the 1960's, movement organizations that used his documentaries as fundraisers, organizing films and outreach vehicles included the United Farm Workers,The United Packinghouse Workers Union, the Sierra Club, Women for Peace, and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. All his films are available on DVD and can be streamed and downloaded. Over 1000 of his photo images are available for viewing in galleries on this web site. All films and photos are available for purchase and licensing.

MEDIA – For photos & interviews: Paul Richards (510) 967 5577; paulrichards@estuarypress.com