Richard Learoyd: Day for Night

(Hardback)

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This deluxe, oversized monograph offers the most comprehensive collection of Richard Learoyds color studio images to datemostly 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 an entirely grainless image. The overall sense of these larger-than-life images redefines the photographic illusion. Learoyds subjects, composed simply and directly, are described with the thinnest plane of focus, recreating and exaggerating the way that the human eye perceives not without a small acknowledgement to the paintings of the Dutch Masters. The 150 images in this volume have been reproduced with utmost care to capture the luminosity of the original materials. Includes an artist statement by Learoyd and curatorial statement by Martin Barnes, who is organizing the first solo exhibition of the artists work at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Author Bio

Richard Learoyd studied fine-art photography at the Glasgow School of Art under professor Thomas Joshua Cooper. His work has been included in group shows at the International Center of Photography, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the National Gallery, London. Learoyd started his camera obscura work in 2003. He is represented by McKee Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. He lives in Wiltshire, South West England, with his family and works in a studio in Spitalfields, East London. Richard Learoyd studied fine-art photography at the Glasgow School of Art under professor Thomas Joshua Cooper. His work has been included in group shows at the International Center of Photography, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the National Gallery, London. Learoyd started his camera obscura work in 2003. He is represented by McKee Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. He lives in Wiltshire, South West England, with his family and works in a studio in Spitalfields, East London. Martin Barnes is senior curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In addition to curating numerous touring exhibitions in the UK, his curated exhibitions at the museum include Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography (2010). Barnes writes on contemporary photographers for such publications as Aperture and Portfolio, as well as for exhibition catalogues. Nancy Gryspeerdt lives in London and works in television drama.