thank you mr learoyd!

Richard Learoyd, Anne

ok...let's start at the beginning:
there is an exhibition currently hapening in ICP museum which I went to see a few weeks baclk. it's a cool exhibition, lot of different stuff, yada yada...but! then you come into the room in the back of the 1st floor, you turn right and there is a big big print of a girl in a red dress (hence the name: Agnes in Red Dress)sitting on a chair.

Richard Learoyd, Agnes, Red Dress

you like it/don't like it, find it interesting/not interesting, whatever but whichever of these it is (I both liked and found it interesting but let's leave it at that), something maes you want to come closer and take a better look. there is something off about this print...the girl looks...too alive almost - if she weren't slightly bigger than most people, you would assume she was sitting right there in front of you. and then you do go closer and the feeling is still the same...details, shaaaalow depth of field...everything is there and more so than you ever saw before. and then you, which you usually don't do, feel the need to read the sign - there must be some sort of an explanation. and there it is:
mr learoyd does his work in a room-size camera obscura! that is, he uses two rooms with a pin-hole in between them. and in the one is a model while in the other is (and this is the best part) direct positive paper!!! there are no negatives, there is no camera, there is though, a movable wall which is there to determine, not so much the size of the reflection but to focus (if I understood correctly) and there is a hiiiigh quality lense in the hole.

so...I talked abut this photo for days, tried to get everybody and anybody to go and see it so, you can imagine how exciting it was, the moment i realized there was actually a whole show of richard learoyd's work!
so excited that, in the excitement I almost missed it:)
luckily, that didn't happen - I went to see it on the very last day (the same day I was moving and also shooting for a school assignment of my own) and...oh, so good that I did!

all the works on display in this fancy shmancy 5th avenue gallery are, hard as it is to imagine, even more impressive than the one in ICP museum
the models are ready to walk out into the room and thier faces show more detail than you would get when looking at yourself in a mirror. sound like it would be a bad thing (all the tiniest of tiny imperfections being there for all to see) but it actually makes these women (and an occasional squid) as beautiful as it gets.
and the depth of field is so shallow that, with one eye in focus, not only is the other eye but the base of the nose already, loses sharpness. or, to illustrate the point better, in the nude version of this image of agnes (I couldn't find the nude but the position is the same), her shoulder is in focus and so is her hand but the rest of the arm is not!

Richard Learoyd, Agnes B

and to think I almost missed this!

try that position and take notice how little distance it is between the shoulder and the arm...I mean, to make a camera (roomsize!) taht can note this distance...wow!

so...thank you mr learoyd, this show made my moving day 10 times better than it would otherwise be!
well, mr learoyd and these awesome friends of mine...but that's another story...:)

j-No on flickr