Richard Learoyd. The silence of the dark camera
In a time when photography has become trivial and ubiquitous, Richard Learoyd’s photographs are uniquely captivating. His black and white and color photographs are the result of an artisan process with a dark camera he built himself. His work is rooted in the past and makes multiple references to the history of painting, both in terms of his themes and the technique he employs.
Richard Learoyd (Nelson, United Kingdom, 1966) is one of the most well-known contemporary photographers working today.
The exhibition, which covers the last ten years of his work, is organized by Fundación MAPFRE and curated by Sandra Philips and includes 51 works from important public and private collections and the photographer’s own studio The show also includes a landscape taken in Spain commissioned by Fundación MAPFRE and that has been added to the MAPFRE photography collection, which now has two works by the artist.
This exhibition brings together the best of his work from over a decade. Richard Learoyd‘s work mainly consists of portraits of clothed or nude models carried out in his studio, although the photographer has also covered other topics: animal, landscape or dark mirror photography.
All of his work benefits from this serious and tender dedication to his art. The photographer sometimes even returns to the same spot to photograph something during the different seasons of the year. Through his unique perceptive abilities, Learoyd is able to transform what he chooses to photograph.
The exhibition presents Richard Learoyd at the peak of his career, with a selection of 51 works in color and black and white. The themes reflect the classic genres of traditional painting: portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The exhibition also includes one of the landscapes taken in Spain (in Lanzarote), commissioned by Fundación MAPFRE and which is included in the Foundation’s Photography Collection, which now includes two more of the artist’s pieces.
His work has recently been on exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (2015) and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (2016). His photographs feature in the collections of some of the most important museums in the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tate in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (Missouri) and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, as well as in other important institutions and in several private collections. Richard Learoyd’s work featured at the McKee Gallery in New York until its closure in 2016. His work is currently on view at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York.
