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Creator
Saunders, Richard, 1922-1987
Call number
Sc Photo Richard Saunders Collection
Physical description
17.38 linear feet (53 boxes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Richard Saunders photographs, Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library
Repository
Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply
Status note
Portions of this collection are currently stored offsite.

Richard Saunders (1922-1987) was a Black photojournalist who primarily covered Black communities in the United States and later Africa and the Middle East. Most of the collection is from Saunders' time as a lead photographer for the United States Information Agency, where he photographed and interviewed for Topic, a magazine distributed in Africa. The collection contains material related to his photographic assignments, including negatives, contact sheets, prints, captions, and notes.

Biographical/historical information

Richard Saunders was a Black photojournalist born in Bermuda in 1922. He moved to the United States with his family in 1930, where he developed an interest in photography. When his family moved back to Bermuda, during the outbreak of World War II, Saunders found a job in a friend's camera store and worked briefly as a police department photographer.

Saunders relocated to New York City in 1945, where he studied photography at Brooklyn College and humanities and sociology at the New School for Social Research. In New York, Saunders befriended the photographer Gordon Parks, who helped him secure a job as a photographic lab technician. In the late 1940s, Saunders started taking photography assignments from the photo agency Black Star. Saunders' first published photograph was an Ebony magazine cover depicting his wife, Emily Saunders (formerly Wilson.) Emily Saunders was a seamstress and also often worked as Richard's assistant.

In 1951, Saunders was asked to join a group of photographers selected by Roy Stryker to document Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during its period of deindustrialization for the Pittsburgh Photographic Library at the University of Pittsburgh. Stryker, formerly of the Information Division of the Farm Security Association, had managed several large projects where he would employ and mentor photojournalists. Stryker encouraged photojournalists to be both knowledgeable and compassionate about their subjects. For two years, Saunders lived with and photographed Black families in the Lower Hill District, a major cultural center for the Black community of Pittsburgh. Saunders documented the area from 1955 until 1960, a period when buildings in the Hill District were demolished to make room for a sports arena, displacing the community as a whole. This work was recognized by Life magazine, and he was awarded the Young Photographers Contest prize.

Throughout the 1950s to the early 1960s, Saunders took assignments from various publications, including Ladies Home Journal, Fortune, Ebony, and Look. Wanting to focus on socially conscious photo essay work, Saunders practiced as a freelance photographer in the 1960s. Some of his significant projects included photographing civil rights leaders Malcolm X and James Farmer. The pictures were subsequently printed in The New York Times and other major newspapers.

Saunders began his over twenty-year association with the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1967. He was hired as their international editor and photographer for Topic, the agency's magazine distributed in USIA outposts in Africa to promote American aid and cooperation. Saunders lived in Tunisia, and traveled throughout Africa and the Middle East taking photographs for Topic. While working in Africa and the Middle East, Saunders wrote articles and recorded interviews with different subjects. Saunders continued photographing in Africa until his retirement in 1986.

Richard Saunders died in Washington, DC in 1987. In the 1990s, Emily Saunders and Kay Reese began work on a book of Richard's photography, but the project was never published.

Scope and arrangement

The Richard Saunders photographs contain photographic prints, slides, and negatives of America and Africa in the 1940s through the 1980s. The photographs were created during Saunders' career as a photojournalist.

The collection is arranged by project or assignment into four series that cover his freelance projects, assignments with Topic, portfolios, as well as some portraits of Saunders.

The collection details Saunders' documentary work in the United States from the 1940s through 1983, his work for Topic magazine from 1967 through the 1980s, and pictures throughout his life working and on vacation in Bermuda.

The Richard Saunders photographs are arranged in four series:

  • Freelance
    1940-1983

    Series I contains Saunders' freelance files and includes prints, contact sheets, slides, and negatives from the 1940s through 1983.

    Assignments are arranged alphabetically by subject or publication. The primary coverage during this period includes the photographs of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam in New York City and Washington, DC in the 1960s. Another large project from this period includes coverage of James Farmer and his work as the founder and Director of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). The series also holds celebrity portraits Saunders took for the The New York Times in 1964 and 1965, often assigned by Sunday Times editor, Sy Peck.

    The Pittsburgh Documentary Project is one folder of prints Saunders' made while working with Roy Stryker to document the deindustrialization of the Lower Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These photographs date from 1955 through 1961, but individual pictures have not been dated. These files contain solely black and white prints, without any negatives, slides, or contact sheets.

  • Topic Assignments
    1963-1983

    Series II holds assignments from Topic magazine, which comprise the majority of the collection.

    Some of the Topic assignments include profiles of individuals such as exiled South African journalist Nat Nakasa, Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty, and James Brown's performance in Lagos, Nigeria in 1971. Saunders also covered the second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC '77) in Lagos, Nigeria in 1977. When American figures visited Africa, such as Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Lillian Carter, Saunders photographed their travels.

    There are also some assignments in the series in which Saunders covered African citizens and dignitaries visits to the United States, mostly in Washington, DC and New York City.

    When known, the issue of Topic in which the photographs were printed is noted.

  • Series III: Portfolios
    1940-1986

    Saunders' Portfolios contain prints from the 1940s through the 1980s, and provides an overview of his career and photographic eye. Several prints have been mounted on board.

    An African Portfolio is an overview of Saunders' documentary work in Africa, and was published as a special issue of Topic. A selection of Saunders photographs were selected for the exhibition, Impressions of Africa, which was organized as a traveling exhibition and toured the continent in the 1970s.

  • Series IV: Portraits of Saunders
    1940-1979

    The photographs in series IV primarily depict Saunders working between the late 1960s and 1970s. There are also some images of his photograph equipment.

    In addition to professional images of Saunders, some photographs of a young Saunders in the 1940s are present. There are also negatives of Saunders posing on a trip to Bermuda in the 1960s.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated to the Schomburg Center in 1989.

Revision History

Finding aid revised and additions in boxes 22-53 processed by Emily P. Dunne in (2025.)

Processing information

Processed by Emily P. Dunne in 2022 and 2025.

Separated material

See the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Books Division for the Richard Saunders papers, Sc MG 984.

See the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, Schomburg Center for the Richard Saunders recordings.

Using the collection

Location

Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Photographs and Prints Division Reading Room

Access restrictions

Boxes 5-14 contain negatives and slides. Boxes 22-33 are interfiled with negatives and slides.