For more than 30 years, Eugene Richards has been regarded as one of the world's best photojournalists. Since his first book, Few Comforts or Surprises (1973), a study of poor African-Americans in the Arkansas Delta, two phrases have been used constantly in connection with his work - 'socially aware' and 'highly personal'. They might seem contradictory in a documentary photographer, but one glance at Richards' many books will demonstrate the concern that marks his work with a passion where, to borrow a phrase from the 1960s - the personal becomes the political.

Another phrase that characterises his pictures is 'hard hitting'. Richards doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of his subjects' lives. He provides us with the unvarnished facts without sensationalising them. His latest book, War Is Personal, to be published by Trolley Books next year, is no different. It deals with the aftermath of the Iraq war, through the lives of the returning wounded and their families.

During a recent visit to London, I talked to him about his new project and related matters.

Gerry Badger: You took part in a symposium on photojournalism last night (as part of Amnesty International's 'Human Rights in the Frame' debates). Can you say a little about photojournalism from your personal perspective?

Eugene Richards: Well, I made the point last night that, despite changes in technology, I'm still making essays the way Gene Smith did, yet we're losing our audience, and partly it's our fault. I'm finding the need to write more with photographs, to ask more questions about photography, and having more doubts about them.

Gerry Badger: As in most discussions about photojournalism, the old concerns about 'truth' were still very much in evidence?

Eugene Richards: Well, I guess truth is the trite term. If you use it it's almost embarrassing, but unless you have the drive to tell a story in a 'truthful' fashion, what is there? I mean where you come from, your religion, your politics, all affect your point of view, but you still have to go out there and tell the truth as best you can. I know (the concept of what is 'truth') is questionable, I know it's tainted, but if you give up trying to tell the truth in a story, photojournalism is finished. I have to go out and talk about the real world, whether that's welcome or not.

Gerry Badger: What makes a good photojournalist?

Eugene Richards: I think the primary requirement in any reporter - and that's all you are - is curiosity, and an unwillingness to take things at surface value. I mean, when you make a portrait of somone, you know the person is 10 layers deeper than the portrait is. I never have the illusion that I 'grabbed' anybody, but I'm driven by curiosity to try. And doubt - I'm driven by curiosity and doubt. That's why I've done stories about the military: doubting my own country's position, why we're doing these things, why so many military actions profit people. I have these doubts and questions. That's what keeps me going.

Precision is an important skill in photojournalism, and I think it's being lost today. Too many photographers use loose metaphors and rely on mood rather than shoot facts. A good photojournalist is also someone who reads a lot and understands the world at more than a superficial level. And who is sceptical about what's going on.

Gerry Badger: You mentioned the military, the subject of your new book?

Eugene Richards: Well, there's nothing new about the approach. There's always been wars, always people questioning those coming back. In fact, it all began with 9/11. I saw the world changing. I thought, this will enable a whole new reconstruction of the military machine and there's going to be a lot of death as a result. The world I was hoping would someday come - in my flower child moments - is over. And I went into a massive depression. I couldn't work. I kept thinking, what's coming? I knew there was going to be more work for me and everybody else, but it still drove me crazy.

And then when the war happened, I knew it was bullshit - there were no weapons of mass destruction. I tried to go to Iraq, but couldn't raise the money. I don't work for any particular magazines, and though I've covered conflict a few times, I'm not an experienced war photographer. But I started bitching about the coverage from Iraq. There were embedded journalists, who were risking their lives, but we weren't seeing what was really going on. It was all so superficial. But I told myself, you've got no right to complain, you haven't done anything. So I thought, what could I do?

What prompted me the most was an anti-war demonstration I went to. My wife and son came along, just to be with me, and they both got arrested for the night. I came home and wrote a poem about it. I'm not a poet, but for some reason I felt the need. It's called War is Personal, and is basically about thinking what I'd do with my son - who was 16 at the time, turning 17 - if there was a draft. What would we do? I personalised it all.

I said now maybe the next step would be to personalise how the war has affected ordinary Americans. I knew I didn't want just to do returning soldiers, but that became the premise. And I knew it wouldn't just be photography, even though it's photographs in a book. I would say it's primarily textual material with photo-illustrations.

Gerry Badger: But you've always written text as well as taken photographs?

Eugene Richards: The Fat Baby book (published by Phaidon in 2003) is the biggest collection of writings I've done, and I did them because I was fascinated by memory. Many years ago I had a head injury and wanted to protect my memory. Curiously, I found out that by writing things started to come back.

People who have gone through momentous tragedies, like the Holocaust, will tell you how they can't remember. They close it out. I know Holocaust survivors who'll tell you something that's not necessarily true, because you have to fill up the emptiness. Suddenly they can't remember a thing, so they'll say something happened. You know it's not true, but they're trying to remember. I sometimes can't recall what happened to me in Bosnia when I was there covering the war. But I'll sit down and I'll write, and I can tell when I'm lying. It's a fascinating thing. I become a judge of my own truthfulness, and slowly, the truth emerges. So all along that's why I've written.

And also, when I look at the pictures, they just don't tell the whole story. I wished the hell they did, and I know the argument that they do a million things. There's nothing I love more (except my family) than photographs, but they don't talk about the facts of things. They're easily manipulated, so I find myself having to write with them. I don't think it's necessarily healthy, but I do.

Gerry Badger: Clearly in any photo book or photo essay, the aim is to create some kind of narrative, and text can help?

Eugene Richards: It's a delicate balance. In War is Personal, many of the pictures were made while I was doing interviews. I wanted it to be an experiential, spontaneous thing. As a result the encounters were much more dynamic than I would have thought.

For instance, there's a picture of Tomas Young in his wheelchair (on page 20). Tomas was a young man who on his fourth day in Iraq - having gone out there, young and patriotic, wanting to avenge 9/11 - got shot in the spine. When I arrived at his house, he had woken up after a bad night's sleep, taken his medicines, and fallen back asleep. He takes morphine and 13 pills a day. His wife had inadvertently given him a second dose, so he'd overdosed, and that's what you see in the pictures.

And he became the inspiration for the book. This was meant to be a calm book, not embarrassing to the subjects, so I called him up afterwards and said, 'Look, Tomas, you look like shit in these pictures, man.' And he replied, 'So?' I remember saying I'd caught him at a bad time, and I didn't want to make him look bad. He's a handsome young man and so on. He said, 'All I want you to do is tell the truth. There are so many stories about vets coming home, and they get their prosthetic legs, and they run on the beach. For most of us that's not going to happen. We're never going to get wholly back from that war. I'll never get over it. None of them will ever get over it. So do your stories, tell your stories.' So that became the fundamental idea. To tell their stories.