Most photographers spend their lives hidden behind the camera. While their subjects might be rendered iconic through a careful balance of light and composition, the images’ creators usually keep themselves on the dark side of the shutter.
But Cory Richards took the most important image of his career when he turned the camera on himself. You’ve probably seen it. It’s a simple self-portrait — but taken in a moment of true terror. In 2011, Richards and two legendary mountaineers barely survived an avalanche after completing the first winter ascent of the Himalayas’ Gasherbrum II.
The image of Richards’ horrified, ice-covered face as he emerged from the snow made the cover of National Geographic Magazine. The trio’s brutal but successful expedition was also featured in a Reel Rock documentary.
But that experience was merely the beginning of another, more difficult journey. While climbing saved Richards from a troubled childhood, it was now a source of new trauma. And as Richards sought to heal, he found himself confronting the suppressed memories that he’d long avoided.
The peaks and valleys of Richards’ life and career — including an early diagnosis of bipolar disorder — are told with a heart-wrenching lack of sentimentality in his new memoir, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within.
He also released his first photo book, Bi-Polar: Photographs from an Unquiet Mind, showcasing 23 years of photography. While it includes plenty of the alpine climbing that partially became “his brand,” the book showcases the breadth of his work, from lonely polar bears and laughing villagers to enraptured musicians and nude portraits.
GearJunkie caught up with Richards this week about his two new books, an evolving view on mental health, and his insistence that “storytelling is consciousness.”
GearJunkie: First off, ‘Bi-Polar’ is your first photo book, compiling many of your best images from more than two decades as a photographer and mountaineer. What does publishing this mean to you?
Richards: It’s an interesting experience to hold something physical that represents 20 years of your life. It’s as if, at times, I’m seeing or experiencing the moments for the very first time. So often, there’s this misconception that photography demands presence. But for me it’s about artistic flow, not presence. There’s this physical object between me and the world.
Photography is a sacrificial act so others can stand in that moment. Now that it’s a book, I’m able to stand in the moment for the first time. It feels more like an expression, and a reminder that I’ve been so fortunate to see and do so many amazing things. So there’s a tremendous amount of gratitude.
GJ: For better or worse, photography has become a part of daily life for people all around the world, thanks to smartphones and social media. Do you think having a physical copy of a photograph still makes a difference? How does it change the experience?
Richards: I do think there’s something important about having a physical object. I believe it transcends space and time to make the moment feel more concrete. It’s harder to ignore when you have the physical object. It amplifies its value.
Most of us consume photography on screens, and that’s fine, especially if it’s hard-hitting stuff about what’s happening in the world. But I do think that hard copies make us slow down. It takes time to pick up a book and flip a page. There’s value in that these days.
GJ: What do you look for in an image? If you had to name a through-line in your work that connects adventure photography to intimate portraits, what would you call it?
Richards: More than anything, I want people to have an experience. I want people to know what it feels like — not just what it looks like. That would be a successful photograph to me. There’s nothing wrong with a beautiful photograph. But I look for amplifying an emotional experience. And that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s just a little person in a big landscape. Photography meets you where you’re at. It can speak to different pieces of different people.
GJ: In your memoir ‘The Color of Everything,’ you write that your adventures were often a means of escaping your past — until the avalanche experience in 2011 forced you to confront it. Do you think that many adventure athletes pursue risky outdoor sports for similar reasons?
Richards: A lot of these athletes or artists are using these things to understand themselves more fully, or to avoid them, or both. There’s a level of distraction that comes with this lifestyle to allow them to sidestep. There’s also a deep searching that happens in these pursuits or in these environments.
The “running from” idea gets a bad rap. But there’s nothing wrong with putting distance between yourself and the past. Sometimes it allows you to go back and excavate things later on. Had the avalanche not happened, I’m almost certain these issues would have come up regardless. They would have presented in different ways, but certainly they’re always going to come up.
GJ: You talk frankly in your memoir about your struggles with mental health. Since the pandemic, it’s more common to see media organizations tackling this issue. What would you like to add to that conversation? Or what do you think is missing?
Richards: I think the conversation has veered into a place of over-indexing victimhood. Now because we’re learning about our trauma and it’s front page news, people are identifying with it and armchair-diagnosing themselves with terms that we don’t have a lot of education around. We’re eager to use those labels and stories to understand our own discomfort.
The issue with that is we get sucked into stories about our trauma and then we kind of hide behind it. This is my trauma, ergo this is how I act. We tend to identify with our trauma and think that by understanding it conceptually, we’ve healed it.
But the understanding of trauma is only the jumping-off point. Psychology is an invitation out of victimhood, not into it. It undercuts our resilience. What I would to see, and the work I’m trying to do, is break that story and get people out of adherence to a label or diagnosis. I think there’s real value in identifying it, learning about it, and then leaving those stories behind.
I don’t even really give a shit about the diagnosis. I was diagnosed at 14 years old. What adolescent isn’t bi-polar to some degree? I see the irony of titling the book Bi-Polar. But I did that mindfully, because it’s meant to be a celebration of neuro-divergence — not a celebration of a diagnosis.
I don’t want to identify with those things. I want to make space for celebrating this, and switch the idea of brokenness into superpower, while managing the behaviors effectively.
GJ: What do you hope your books can do for readers who might relate to your experience, either as a mountaineer or as a person trying to better understand their mental health?
Richards: The entire thesis of The Color of Everything is that storytelling is consciousness. While we can’t choose what happens to us, we can direct the story we tell. That’s not to say we bypass the ugliness or the violence that might have been perpetrated against us. But over time, there’s a possibility to step out of “This happened to me” to “This happened.”
This is all about storytelling. If we believe we are a victim, we stay victimized by it. The invitation is to step into it and move beyond it and let it go. The last chapter is about how it’s all just a story. You can tell stories that keep you trapped, or you can tell stories that set you free.
GJ: How do you implement that in your own life?
Richards: If we’re constantly telling ourselves a story that everything is fucked, even subconsciously, then we’re going to believe it. I’m not saying that our rights aren’t under attack. There’s cause for concern. I’m not discounting that. I am saying that in the moment to moment reality of our lives, most things are not fucked.
We can begin to see how marvelous it all is, most of the time. It gives us more energy and hope to work against the things that are harmful. We can get out of the idea that we’re constantly under threat.
There’s no real prescriptive pathway to this. Anytime you say, “I am,” or “I can’t,” or “I won’t,” that is an invitation into introspection. And they usually come with a very powerful story.
GJ: How has your perspective about the outdoors changed? About adventuring outside?
Richards: I think about it in more even terms. I used to think of it as a full refuge and total freedom. The source of healing. And I think all of those things are true. The pathway to exploration. The amplification of curiosity. All of those things are still true.
But I also understand that my pathway of adventure and the outdoors was an escape, a rationalization for being selfish. An over-indexing on stimulation. Somewhat of an addiction and an escapism.
I’m not telling a story of brokenness in the outdoors. I’m just giving some air to the fact that I often used it in a maladaptive way. I lost sight of its positive benefits because I was engaged with it in an unhealthy way.
But I’m also so grateful for it. Look at the life that it created. It’s the most beautiful thing. What a gift.
Learn more about Cory Richards on his website, or purchase his books through Amazon.
