Eugene Richards was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. After graduating from Northeastern University with a degree in English and journalism, he studied photography with Minor White at M.I.T. In 1968 he joined VISTA and was assigned as a health care advocate to eastern Arkansas. Two years later he helped found a social service organization and a community newspaper, Many Voices, that reported on black political action and the Ku Klux Klan. After publication of his first two books, Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta (1973) and his self-published Dorchester Days (1978), Richards was invited to become a member at Magnum.

Richards is best known for his books - he has authored thirteen - and photo essays on such diverse topics as breast cancer, drug addiction, poverty, emergency medicine, pediatric HIV and AIDS, the meat packing industry, the plight of the world's mentally disabled, aging and death in America. His work has appeared in countless publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Esquire, TIME, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Fortune, Mother Jones and LIFE. Among numerous honors, he has won the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, the Olivier Rebbot Award twice, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award for coverage of the disadvantaged.