Richard Learoyd

This deluxe, oversized monograph offers the most comprehensive collection of Richard Learoyd’s 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 an entirely grainless image. The overall sense of these larger-than-life images redefines the photographic illusion. 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— not without a small acknowledgment 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 artist’s work at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.