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Early life

Elaine Richardson lived with her mother and stepfather, a carpenter, until 1965. In Antigua, she completed her secondary education under the British system, due to Antigua's status as a British colony until 1966.

She moved to New York at the age of 16 to work for a family as an au pair. She worked as a fact checker at Forbes magazine, where she became close friends with reporter, Marsha Daniel, and her husband, Myles Ludwig, then the editorial director of Art Direction magazine. She also befriended Peter Ainsley, the music critic for Women's Wear Daily, who later worked as a writer for Time magazine. They spent a great deal of time together.

After Richardson had returned to university, Ludwig hired her to work at Art Direction, and she later studied photography at the New School for Social Research. She attended Franconia College in New Hampshire for a year and later worked at the New Yorker magazine.