Photographer Richard Learoyd has returned to the ancient roots of his craft to grasp the materiality of that moment of our impact upon the world, specifically with the camera obscura in its most literal definition – the image received on a large sheet of photo-sensitive paper placed on the wall opposite the lens. With the subject positioned in the studio before the camera within a brightly lit space calculated to more or less fill the focal plane, the result is a unique image in a shallow, but almost palpably atmospheric space, with the largest part rendered in crystalline detail and the periphery of the focal plane eliding into the shadowy surround. The images convey a sense of both stillness and flickering movement – e.g., tattooed octopus tentacles embracing the broad pale expanse of a man’s back; the layering and gauzy transparency of a model’s red voile dress, the weight of her hands placed in her lap; alternatively the atmospheric weight of space upon a man’s head cast mostly in shadow – pendant to Learoyd’s project to capture the unbearable light of the moment. 

J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049
Show runs thru November 27, 2016