“The first work I acquired had its back turned to me, a nude twisted like a column, with a shallow depth of field that evokes distant horizons and a terrifying intimacy. The second was a corpse, that of a flamboyant pink flamingo, its feathers threatening to take flight at the slightest gust of wind. Richard is avidly collected around the world. It was high time for him to join the MEP collection and be exhibited to the Parisian public. It’s an honour and a joy to be the catalyst for this.” Rafael Biosse Duplan
Richard Learoyd’s works are made using one of the oldest photographic processes: the camera obscura. Through a custom process, Learoyd creates a room-sized camera in which the photographic paper is exposed. The subject—often a person, either clothed or naked, sometimes a still life—is located in the adjacent room, separated by a lens. Richard Learoyd chooses his models and their clothes with precision, meticulously controlling every detail of the image.
For his colour images, the light falling on the subject is focused directly onto the photographic paper, without a negative interjecting. Working with colourreversal Ilfochrome paper, Richard Learoyd uses his camera obscura to produce a single, unique and highly detailed positive image, without the use of negatives or digital technology. The resulting image has no grain. In black-and-white, the image is fixed on a giant negative, and prints are made using the negative/positive process invented in 1841 by the Englishman W. H. Fox Talbot. The negatives measure up to 2 metres wide, making his gelatin silver contact prints the largest ever made. Accompanied by his own camera obscura, Learoyd travels outside his London studio to the English countryside with its rich art historical heritage, along the Californian coast, and across Eastern Europe, producing images that have long been gestating in his imagination.
Richard Learoyd’s photographs create narratives that span space and time. Those who appear in his images seem to inhabit a world of particular psychological intensity. Although they appear deeply contemporary, these figures also possess a timeless quality that situates them in the history of art. The subjects he chooses for his still lifes have an exceptional, evocative beauty.
His images have become increasingly complex over time, such as with a group of magpies trapped in wires (A murder of magpies, 2013) or his discovery of a discreet and mysterious bag of fishing nets on a beach in Portugal (The sins of the father, 2016).
Two colour prints and three black-and-white prints are entering the MEP’s collection, showcasing part of photographer Richard Learoyd’s technical and aesthetic exercise.
