Richard Olsenius is an American photographer, videographer, and music composer whose 50-year career has taken him around the United States, throughout South America and across the Arctic.
"[14] As a staff photographer at the Minneapolis Tribune, Olsenius covered news and feature stories at the local, state, regional, national and international level.
Stories could vary from local high school football, to energy development in the West, to covering the genocide of Cambodians by dictator Pol Pot.
One of his most notable trips was covering a story about the 60-foot motorsailer, Belvedere, the first American yacht to traverse the fabled Northwest Passage west to east.
[33][34] The Passage is a treacherous waterway through the Arctic archipelago that links the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and has a long history of stranded ships, lost crew and failed dreams.
In 2000 Olsenius resumed his free-lance photography collaborating with American author and radio personality, Garrison Keillor, on a National Geographic Magazine story, "In Search of Lake Wobegon.
Olsenius's photography from the book was exhibited at the Edward Carter Gallery in New York, (October, 2001) the James J. Hill House, Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, Minnesota (December 2001)[46] the Betty Strong Center Encounter Center in Sioux City, Iowa[47](September 2008) and the Stearns County Museum in St.
In one of Olsenius' photos with the caption "Children observing artificial insemination"...it is much like the rest of Garrison Keillor's prose: humorous, nostalgic, real, occasionally heartbreaking and touched with the sublime.
"[49] Malcolm Jones, reviewing In Search of Lake Wobegon for The New York Times, wrote, "the austerely affectionate black-and-white photographs of Richard Olsenius.
"[50] "As an artful evocation of Keillor's beloved invention, Richard Olsenius's elegantly composed black-and-white photographs of rural Minnesota capture the dignity of his subjects, the beauties of the landscape as well as the enduring values and eccentricities of the communities rooted there.
"[51] In addition to his work with National Geographic, Olsenius's photography was published in other books like the Day in the Life of America (1986),[52] the 1987 Midwest Art Calendar[53][54] and numerous magazines.
Referring to the multi-media Distant Shores, Kevin Lynch of Wisconsin's Capital Times said, "The atmospheric synthesizers and percussive effects reflect the same care and lean lyricism you find in his photos.
"[58] Beginning in 2002 and continuing to 2004, Olsenius began a collaboration with media company View One, the US Army, the Korean War Commemorative Committee and the American Battle Monuments Commission to be art director for full-stage screen presentations, historical reenactments and musical tributes at the MCI Center in Washington DC.
[64] After Warren’s death in 2006, Olsenius and Surette opened the American Landscape Gallery in Eastport, Maryland offering prints and books by both photographers.
Combining writing, music, audio and video interviews, film and stills, the Olsenius's tell the true story of the sinking of the 50-foot top-sail ketch, Sheila Yeates, off the coast of Greenland in 1989.
[69] Olsenius was contracted in 2016 to video edit and write a music score for the Maryland PBS documentary, Beautiful Swimmers Revisited.
The film is a 40-year retrospective on the Pulitzer prize-winning book by William Warner about the Chesapeake Bay watermen and the blue crab that shape their lives.
In March, 2017, Richard and Christine Olsenius were invited to be the keynote speakers at the Schuneman Symposium at Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism.