Richard Renaldi

"Western Project is proud to present the first solo exhibition by Richard Renaldi in Los Angeles. Continuing his interest in documenting urban street life, Renaldi will show seven large-scale color portraits shot over the last year with his 8 x 10 format camera. His subjects are both diverse and common, ultimately describing the complexity and vibrancy of Los Angeles’ multi-cultural sprawl. Renaldi works the tradition of August Sander, possessing a discerning and technically exacting eye, but has the emotional incisiveness akin to the paintings of Alice Neel. It is the delicate balance of the artist’s critical and emotional gaze that reveals the human dignity of each subject. The pictures do not tread in the contemporary fashion of voyeurism or exoticism; his images include the hip-ness of Silverlake youth, the elder on Hollywood Boulevard and the ordinariness of Venice racquetball players. It is the humanity in each that Renaldi is after; the difficult and elusive commonality that binds all cultures and generations together. It is in his masterful touch, similar to the writings of Gabriel Marquez, where the audience knows the taste and smell, the difficulty as well as the marvel of our brief human life.

Renaldi has been included in numerous exhibitions in the U.S., including the 2003 Fall Triennial at the International Center for Photography in New York, and solo exhibitions both in 2002 and 2003 at Debs and Co., N.Y."

 "Richard Renaldi is a photographer in love with looking. He searches for the brief encounter, that fleeting moment when a stranger opens his life to him and, consequently, to the viewer. His trust in the descriptive and empathic ability of the camera verges on that of his nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century predecessors. Can we gain insight into the person in front of us simply by staring fixedly into his face, by capturing his figure in crisp detail."

These images really appeal to me as there is so much going on inside the frame, i could look at them hours, studying the subjects and cross comparing the people from on picture to another, the portraits speak of the cities which he uses as his location, telling tales of class and economy. In some images we see wealthy shoppers, in other we see young mothers.
i make up my own stories based on the people in these photographs, i might come up with something way off the mark - never the less that is half the pleasure of these pictures for me, they have that ambiguity to them, they are a vague suggestion, the rest of the tale is left to the viewers imagination.