'To say that Learoyd’s images can be breathtakingly beautiful does not undermine the larger ideas that manifest in his work - the revelation of acute observation and the surprise of captured perception. If anything, their beauty is merely Learoyd’s secret weapon.
Richard Learoyd was born in Nelson, Lancashire in 1966. His mother noted that from a young age, Learoyd was ‘fond of fiddling with things’, eventually suggesting he attend a summer school class in pinhole photography, unknowingly introducing him to a photographic method that would dictate his entire career.
Immediately after graduating from the Glasgow School of Art, Learoyd was commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council to lead a project focusing on dance in Scotland. This marked the beginning of his professional experimentation with large, hand-made camera obscuras, drawing upon works from the likes of Eadweard Muybridge, Edgar Degas and Francis Bacon. Despite photographic technology becoming more advanced and precise, providing an illusion of depth and space more than ever before, Learoyd continues to use primitive methods to achieve such refinement and detail in his work.
'It is critical that the images are literally one of a kind. There is no intermediary negative or digital file from which an infinite number of copies can be made. The light that reflected from the skin of his subject passed through the lens, into the dark chamber and impressed itself upon the emulsion of a single sheet of photographic paper; one solitary picture making one unrepeatable moment. In this way, Learoyd’s pictures detour from photographic glut; instead of endless repetition and ubiquity he slows photography down to a standstill so that we might finally see.'
After Ingres pays homage to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ Grande Odalisque. Both works are distinct to the artist; the woman in Ingres’ nude acknowledges the artist’s presence, her stance is preordained, and her environment is luxurious. By contrast, Learoyd’s subject remains anonymous, her environment intrinsic to the method by which was created.
Other portraits made during this sitting are in the collects
ions of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, and Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban.