  We present gri CCD photometry of 44 Abell clusters and 4 cluster candidates.
Twenty one clusters in our sample have spectroscopic redshifts. Fitting a
relation between mean g, r and i magnitudes, and redshift for this subsample,
we have calculated photometric redshifts for the remainder with an estimated
accuracy of 0.03. The resulting redshift range for the sample is 0.03<z<0.38.
Color-magnitude diagrams are presented for the complete sample and used to
study evolution of the galaxy population in the cluster environment. Our
observations show a strong Butcher-Oemler effect (Butcher & Oemler 1978, 1984),
with an increase in the fraction of blue galaxies (f_B) with redshift that
seems more consistent with the steeper relation estimated by Rakos and
Schombert (1995) than with the original one by Butcher & Oemler (1984).
However, in the redshift range between ~ 0.08 and 0.2, where most of our
clusters lie, there is a wide range of f_B values, consistent with no redshift
evolution of the cluster galaxy population. A large range of f_B values is also
seen between ~ 0.2 and 0.3, when Smail at al. (1998) x-ray clusters are added
to our sample. The discrepancies between samples underscore the need for an
unbiased sample to understand how much of the Butcher-Oemler effect is due to
evolution, and how much to selection effects. We also tested the idea proposed
by Garilli et al. (1996) that there is a population of unusually red galaxies
which could be associated either with the field or clusters, but we find that
these objects are all near the limiting magnitude of the images (20.5<r<22) and
have colors that are consistent with those expected for stars or field galaxies
at z ~ 0.7.
