EXHIBITION: Richard Learoyd at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Richard Learoyd: in the Studio
Until November 27, 2016
@ The Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Melanie – 2015 -silver dye bleach print ©Richard Learoyd courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San-Francisco
To be or not to be… by Beatrice Chassepot
Some portraits by Photographers are like territories to scrutinize or ethnological studies. With British Photographer Richard Learoyd, portraits are more an expression of the metaphysical problematic encountered with the human being.
First of all, the large size of the photographs -one time and a half the real size, if not two times- gives the sense of the size of the problem, Huge! Shakespeare would say “to be or not to be, that is the question”. This is exactly what the large size expresses. The body is gigantically present, but how?
This is where the specific technique used by Learoyd shows it all. Learoyd utilizes a room-sized camera obscura with a fixed lens to make unique direct-positive prints. That technique reveals all the imperfection of the skin, the tiny shadow made by a hand, the delicacy of an incipient smile, the finesse of a fabric.
All these details make a combination of markers that reveal the strength or fragility of the human being represented.
These portraits show the very essence of a human being in its complexity: complexity to exist, to appear, to show, to keep secret, to be or not to be….
Richar Learoyd has been selected to be part of the “Ultimate selection”
Read the interview by
Embracing Imperfection: A Conversation with Photographer Richard Learoyd
The English photographer on his enigmatic, human images and experimental working methods
SELECTED GALLERIES
Pace Gallery NY
Fraenkel Gallery SF
BIOGRAPHY
Richard Learoyd (b. 1966, Nelson, United Kingdom)
He studied photography under the landscape photographer Thomas Joshua Cooper at the Glasgow School of Art.
He is known for his large-scale portrait, landscape and still-life photographs produced using a camera obscura.
His work is in collections of institutions worldwide, such as 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. Learoyd lives and works in London
