Out of the Archives 2: Pioneering photojournalist at USIA, Richard Saunders
Out of the Archives 2: Richard Saunders, roving writer, photographer, pioneering Topic magazine International Editor
The US Information Agency (USIA) was a Cold War propaganda and public diplomacy agency. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) contains a large collection of USIA’s film, photography, and textual records, with many of these holdings still to be explored. As I make research visits to NARA, I’ll be sharing occasional updates of my discoveries, especially those materials related to post-independence Africa, from the USIA archives.
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In the previous installment (№1) of Out of the Archives, I noted that among the articles on African film featured in issue №70 of Topic magazine, a publication designed and distributed to Africans by USIA, was a conversation with Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb. The interview and the accompanying photos were done by one of USIA’s longstanding contributors, a major but mostly unknown Black documentary photographer of the 20th century, Richard Clive Saunders (1922–1987).
Saunders first appeared in print in Topic issue №5 (1965), a special themed issue on African Americans in the Arts, with a profile of theater artist Barbara Ann Teer. Saunders was described as a “freelance photographer, [who] has roamed the world seeking stories, appears regularly in national magazines such as Fortune, Look, Holiday.” Other stories he covered in that first year of Topic ranged from a story on Broadway showgirls playing softball (“Powderpuff League”) to a number of pieces on African exchange students and their experiences in American schools or workplaces, a popular subject for Topic.
In 1967, Saunders was appointed Topic’s International Editor, based in Africa. He relocated to Washington, DC, in 1972, remaining with the magazine until 1986, having traveled to almost 50 countries and written and photographed scores of articles during those two decades. A trip to Gambia documenting descendants of Kunta Kinte, the main character of the 1976 historical blockbuster novel about the slave trade, Roots, and coverage of the second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC ’77) in Lagos, Nigeria were characteristic of Saunders’ output.
In addition to the magazine assignments, Saunders was included in an exhibition with now legendary Gordon Parks and Adger Cowans at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966 as part of USIA’s efforts to promote African American photographers specifically for African audiences, according to a recent article by Darren Newbury. USIA mounted a traveling exhibit of Saunders’ work, “Impressions of Africa,” that toured the continent for several years in the early 1970s. His photos were also displayed in a special exhibit at the Organization of African Unity’s 25th anniversary celebrations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1988.
Saunders was born and raised in Bermuda and moved to New York City in 1947. His first professional assignment was a cover image for Ebony that year, the beginning of a long freelance career for leading magazines. He was mentored by Gordon Parks (who became a lifelong friend) and Parks’ sponsor, Roy Stryker. In the late 1940s, Stryker commissioned Saunders (along with Parks) to work on the Standard Oil Photograph Project as well as a subsequent photo initiative documenting Pittsburgh’s industrial transformation. During this period, as described by the Bermuda National Gallery catalogue, “Saunders developed a recognizable style. . . which leave a graphic impression characterized by pattern, repetition and contrast” and a commitment to documentary shooting without relying on arrangement and artifice to stage images.
Frequently described as warm, friendly, and intrepid, Saunders seemed to revel in the adventure and the human connection of his assignments. “What matters to me are people and their feelings,” he was quoted once. “Above all it is the unconquerable dignity of man, of whatever color, creed or persuasion, that must come through the photographs.”
He relayed in a 1980 interview that when he took up his position at Topic, his peers reacted that he was producing “so-called propaganda” but, to his mind, “Nothing could be further from the truth. My job then, as it is now, was to go into Africa to photograph development stories, stories of people developing their own country. . . I’m not shooting from a government viewpoint but a Saunders viewpoint.”
Nevertheless, there must have been plenty of moments when Saunders had to navigate USIA’s interests in portraying American racial politics (and America-Africa relations) in a positive light and steer his own course through convoluted race dynamics, even on the African continent.
An oft-cited anecdote is of a 1973 visit by Saunders and his wife, Emily, to South Africa to accompany his touring photo exhibit. Despite his status as a US cultural envoy, because of apartheid-era restrictions, they were denied service at a hotel’s nightclub. A US State Department official explained this kind of incident could happen “when a Black gets off the beaten track.” US diplomats protested and apparently the embarrassed South African government soon thereafter introduced legislation to open up four- and five-star hotels in the country to anyone who could afford them, including black South Africans.
Saunders is mentioned briefly in Deborah Willis’ encyclopedic Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1940 to the Present. However, his relative lack of renown is striking given the breadth of his oeuvre and his particular specialization in post-independence African subjects. It is probably due to the fact that most of his work was for USIA; by law, the agency’s materials could only be distributed to foreign audiences and, therefore, were not seen by US audiences.
An unanticipated consequence is that this brilliant body of Saunders’ writing and photos remained out of sight during his lifetime. Though proud of his work for USIA, he expressed some regret that Americans were not given the opportunity to view his images of Africa. “I am very concerned about that. Many Americans have what I term a National Geographic mentality about Africa, “ he related in an interview. “Occasionally, I give someone in the States a photograph, or they see some of my essays and they absolutely flip because they see an Africa they have never known.”
It took another act of legislation to finally get Saunders’ portfolio of 20 years of photographs for Topic made available to the public. In 1991, Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel successfully introduced legislation that allowed Saunders’ collection to be transferred to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. His wife also donated some of his photographs to the Bermuda National Gallery’s permanent collection. I have updated the Wikipedia entry for Richard Saunders with some of my research. A full biography and catalogue of Saunders’ photojournalism remains to be written.
