{"product_id":"the-blue-room","title":"The Blue Room","description":"\u003cp\u003eEugene Richards is one of Americas greatest living social documentary photographers. His intense vision and unswerving commitment to documenting the plight of the disadvantaged has produced powerful work on topics such as drug addiction  poverty  the mentally disabled  ageing and the personal consequences of war. The Blue Room is his first colour project  a moving  highly personal project that brings together the themes that encompass all of Richards work  what he describes as the transient nature of things. The photographs are portraits of the abandoned and forgotten houses of western America in areas such as the plains of Kansas  Nebraska  New Mexico and the Dakotas. In the early twentieth century  railroads lured settlers west with the promises of homesteads and towns rose across the plains. But in the wake of the Depression and the dust storms of the 1930s the towns faltered then failed. Richards enigmatic photographs of these forgotten homes are a meditation on memory and loss  family photographs stuck on a wall  a wedding dress hanging in a bedroom  snow falling on a bed by an open window  a wild horse standing at an open kitchen window. Richards contemplative  beautiful photographs inspire us to imagine the lives of the former occupants  and make a quiet statement on the inevitability of the circle of life and death  and the vulnerability of man in the face of shifting economic opportunities and the climate.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44986449690677,"sku":"ByrdShop_0714848328","price":358.54,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780714848327.jpg?v=1770905177","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-blue-room","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}