synopsis
This deluxe, oversized monograph offers the most comprehensive collection of British photographer Richard Learoyd's (born 1966) color studio images to date--mostly portraits, but also including a handful of exquisite still lifes. The color images are made with one of the most antiquarian of photographic processes: the camera obscura, literally translated from Latin as "dark room." Learoyd has created a room-sized camera in which the Cibachrome photographic paper is exposed. The subject is in the adjacent room, separated by a lens. Light falling on the subject is directly focused onto the photographic paper without an interposing film negative. The result is a perfectly clear, entirely grainless, larger-than-life image. Learoyd's subjects, composed simply and directly, are described with the thinnest plane of focus, recreating and exaggerating the way that the human eye perceives; the images recall Dutch Master paintings in tone and composition.This volume includes more than 150 images, reproduced with the utmost care to capture the luminosity of the originals. It also includes an artist statement by Learoyd; a statement by Nancy Gryspeerdt, one of his subjects; and a text by Martin Barnes, curator of the first solo exhibition of the artist's work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
photos of the book
technical information
publisher : Aperture
2015
328 pages
dimensions : 34 x 44 cm
2015
328 pages
dimensions : 34 x 44 cm
about Richard Learoyd
Richard Learoyd's large photographs are taken both in his studio and in the field. They are made using a custom-made camera obscura: this is essentially a darkroom or series of darkrooms with a hole or lens on one side, through which an image is directly projected onto the opposite printing surface. Using this historic device, Learoyd captures carefully composed portraits, landscapes and still lifes with palpable proximity. This immediacy results in a printed image which, in the absence of an intermediate printing or enlargement process, presents neither grain nor pixelation. With light exhibitions reminiscent of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, Learoyd's images create resonances with historical works, constructing narratives that span space and time.
Learoyd’s photographs were the subject of the solo exhibition Dark Mirror at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2015) and were exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, in 2016. His work is in the permanent collections of institutions worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
book in my collection
publisher : Aperture
2015 (1st edition)
2015 (1st edition)