Richard Speedy grew up in Princeton, NJ and his passion for photography began when he was given his first camera at age 6.  Many of the earliest photos in the family scrapbook show him with a Kodak Brownie hanging around his neck. As the pages turn, he disappears more and more from view as he takes his place behind the lens of the family camera.

By age eight, he was making portraits and still life images  with his Kodak Brownie Hawkeye flash camera.  These included dioramas of imaginary and far-off places, along with studies of specimens he gathered from his explorations of the outside world.

After graduating from Princeton High School, Richard went to Brooks Institute of Photography in Southern California where he majored in cinematography before changing his focus to still photography.  In 1972, he relocated to New York City where he worked as an assistant to many of New York’s best advertising photographers, shooting everything from fashion, to still-life, to portraiture. During this period, he also received recognition for this work in the form of two artist fellowships, one of which supported his ongoing photography in the New Jersey Pinelands. In 1980, with photographer Toby Richards, he opened Richards & Speedy Studio where they and their team produced many award-winning image campaigns for clients such as Sony, J&J, Benetton, Medtronic and AT&T. 

 

Since then, Richard has pursued a wide variety of subjects and imaging possibilities both in the studio and in the world at large.  A sample of his projects can be viewed in the Galleries section of this website. Fascinated by Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, Richard has lived for extended periods in Sonora, Mexico and Taos, New Mexico. He currently resides in Hopewell, NJ.