Richard Cross (photojournalist)

Cross was born on April 1, 1950, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Russell and Francoise Cross.{{cite thesis |last=Menzies |first=Lizabeth Jamieson |date=1985 |title=Richard Cross: The Life and Death of a Photojournalist in War and Peace |degree=MA |publisher=Syracuse University}}{{rp|7}} He attended Northwestern University from 1968-1972 and graduated with a degree in journalism.{{rp|7-9}} His interest in photography was inspired by the sociologist Howard S. Becker, who helped Cross learn how photography could be a research method, a sociological tool, and an art form.{{rp|7-8}} While at Northwestern he worked as the photo editor of the student newspaper as well as the director of the photographic laboratory.{{rp|8}} He also worked for six months as a medical photographer in the surgical department of Saint Francis Hospital of Evanston.{{rp|9}}

After college he worked for one year as a photographer at the Daily Globe in Worthington, Minnesota, and then spent four years as a Peace Corps worker in Colombia as an audio-visual consultant and photographer.{{cite web |url=https://library.csun.edu/SCA/Peek-in-the-Stacks/teatro |title=The Teatro de Cristóbal Colón, Bogotá, Colombia |author= |date=March 2, 2021 |website=Peek in the Stacks |access-date=March 5, 2021}} While in Colombia he began to collaborate with anthropologist [//ast.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_S._de_Friedemann Nina de Friedemann] on a project researching Afro-Colombians in Palenque de San Basilio, one of the first communities of former slaves in the Americas. Friedemann and Cross co-wrote a book based on their research entitled Ma Ngombe: guerreros y ganaderos en Palenque, published in 1979, which included over 250 of Cross's photographs.{{cite web |url=https://library.csun.edu/SCA/Peek-in-the-Stacks/richard-cross |title=Richard Cross Photographic Collection |author= |date=July 14, 2020 |website=Peek in the Stacks |access-date=July 24, 2020 }}

In 1979 Cross left Colombia to begin documenting the civil wars in the Central American countries of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. He also documented refugees from Central America who had fled into Mexico. He sold his photographs to a variety of magazines, newspapers, and news outlets including Newsweek and the Associated Press. Cross co-authored a book in 1982 with Nicaraguan priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal entitled Nicaragua: la guerra de liberación, which included dozens of his photographs. He was nominated by the Associated Press for a Pulitzer Prize for his photojournalism work in Nicaragua.{{cite news |last=Haynes |first=Gary |date=September 18, 1983 |title=Exhibition Honors Slain Photo-Journalist |work=Philadelphia Inquirer |page=11 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1814387149 |access-date=November 5, 2024|id={{ProQuest|1814387149}} }}

Cross enrolled in a graduate program in visual anthropology at Temple University, and in 1980 he and fellow graduate student Peter Biella took thousands of photographs of the Ilparayuko Maasai people in Tanzania for an ethnographic film, entitled Maasai Solutions.{{cite thesis |last=Biella |first=Peter |date=1984 |title=Theory and Practice in Ethnographic Film: Implications of the Ilparakuyo Maasai Film Project |degree=Ph.D. |publisher=Temple University |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/303332987|access-date=November 5, 2024|id={{ProQuest|303332987}} }} The next year Cross and Biella co-authored a book entitled Maasai Solutions: A Film About East African Dispute and Settlement.

Anthropologist Richard Charen, Cross's advisor at Temple University, wrote about his motivations for photojournalism and his philosophy of working as a professional photographer:

[Richard Cross's} interest in visual anthropology was motivated on two accounts. First, he expressed a keen curiosity for learning more about how photographs "worked" as a communicative medium--not simply as a technical process involving optics, grain structure, chemicals, or even in aesthetic terms--but more importantly, in cognitive, social, political, economic, and cultural contexts. As a young thinking photojournalist, Richard was not satisfied with merely getting the "right" picture--an image that conformed to an often unarticulated set of editorial decisions, sometimes aesthetic, sometimes political, as imposed by photo agencies and staffs of popular publications. It became clear that Richard felt a growing sense of responsibility for images he "took from" people and "gave to" the viewing public. The political context of image publications became an increasingly important problem in his practice of photography. {{cite book |last=Strauss |first=David Levi |author-link=David Levi Strauss |date=2003 |title=Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics |chapter=Photography and Propaganda: Richard Cross and John Hoagland in Central America and in the News |location=New York |publisher=Aperture Foundation |page=21 |isbn=9781597112147}} |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Between_the_Eyes/w76quAAACAAJ?hl=en |access-date=November 5, 2024

Cross himself wrote about his own motivations for photography:

Photographs cannot end wars, cure maladies, or right social wrongs. They can sometimes, however, arouse emotions and stimulate a human being to thought and to a higher awareness of his own values and potential.{{rp|166}}

Cross died on June 21, 1983, when, on assignment with U.S. News and World Report,{{cite news |last=McKinney |first=Jack |date=June 24, 1983 |title=Who killed the newsmen? Did 2 American journalists know too much? |work=Philadelphia Daily News |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1814263808 |access-date=November 5, 2024|id={{ProQuest|1814263808}} }} {{cite news |last=Oakland |first=Ross |date=June 25, 1983 |title=Their deaths spur political salvos |work=The Globe and Mail |location=Toronto |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/386635759 |access-date=November 5, 2024|id={{ProQuest|386635759}} }} he and Los Angeles Times journalist Dial Torgerson were in a car struck by a land mine in Honduras.{{cite news |last=Crossette |first=Barbara |date=June 22, 1983 |title=Two American Journalists Killed at Border, Honduran Army Says |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/22/world/two-american-journalists-killed-at-border-honduran-army-says.html |work=New York Times |access-date=July 24, 2020 }}{{cite news |last=Crossette |first=Barbara |date=June 23, 1983 |title= 2 Slain U.S. Journalists Flown to Honduran Capital |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/23/world/2-slain-us-journalists-flown-to-honduran-capital.html |work= New York Times |access-date=July 24, 2020 }}{{ cite news |author= |date=July 16, 1983 |title=Journalists Slain in Honduras Killed by Land Mine, U.S. Says |work= New York Times |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/122091745/sem-2 |access-date=November 5, 2024}}{{cite news |last=McKinney |first=Jack |date=November 4, 1987 |title=Long Wait for the Truth: Contra Mine Took Temple Grad Student's Life |work=Philadelphia Daily News |page=71 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1831767653 |access-date=November 5, 2024|id={{ProQuest|1831767653}} }} His photographic archive is preserved by the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center in the University Library, Special Collections and Archives at California State University, Northridge.{{cite web |url= https://library.csun.edu/eNews/Spring-2020/spotlight |title= Oviatt Spotlight: The Richard Cross Collection |last=Flores |first=Gina |date=Spring 2020 |website=Oviatt Library eNews |access-date=July 24, 2020 }}{{cite web |url=https://medium.com/@jlbenavides/commemorating-the-36th-anniversary-of-the-death-of-american-photographer-richard-cross-5faf34f992ec |title=Commemorating the 36th Anniversary of the Death of American Photographer Richard Cross |last=Benavides |first=Jose Luis |date=June 21, 2019 |website=Medium.com |access-date=July 24, 2020 }}

• Ma Ngombe: guerreros y ganaderos en Palenque (1979)

• Maasai Solutions: A Film About East African Dispute and Settlement (1981)

• Nicaragua: la guerra de liberación (1982)

• Richard Cross: Ilparakuyo Masai Photographs. Samuel Paley Library, Temple University. September 19, 1983–October 19, 1983.{{cite news |author= |date=September 12, 1983 |title=Temple University Exhibition to Honor Slain Photojournalist |work=Philadelphia Inquirer |page=B2 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1814390361 |access-date=November 5, 2024|id={{ProQuest|1814390361}} }}
• Two Faces of War. San Diego Crafts Center/Grove Gallery, University of California, San Diego. March 26, 1986-April 26, 1986.{{cite news |last=Moran |first=Barbara |date=March 26, 1986 |title=Two Faces of War |work=San Diego Union-Tribune |page=E2}}
• Visualizing the People’s History: Richard Cross’s Images of the Central American Liberation Wars. Museum of Social Justice. August 15, 2019–January 12, 2020.{{cite web |url=https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/arts-and-culture/richard-cross-exhibition-on-central-america-to-open-at-the-museum-of-social-justice/ |title=Richard Cross Exhibition on Central America to Open at the Museum of Social Justice |author= |date=August 9, 2019 |website=CSUN Today |publisher=California State University, Northridge |access-date=August 26, 2020 }}
• Richard Cross: Memoria Gráfica. Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, San Salvador, El Salvador, January 15–May 31, 2020.{{cite web |url=https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=308020220536459 |title=Richard Cross: memoria gráfica |author= |date=August 19, 2019 |publisher=Facebook |access-date=August 26, 2020 }}
• Chajul: Fotografías de Richard Cross durante el Conflicto Armado (Chajul: Photographs during the armed conflict by Richard Cross), Maya Ixil Museum, Chajul, Guatemala, August 2023.

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Category:1950 births

Category:1983 deaths

Category:20th-century American photographers

Category:Northwestern University alumni

Category:Temple University alumni