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Lot Essay
Learoyd's large-scale, minutely detailed colour portraits do not look like other photographs. Made with a giant camera comprised of two rooms, Learoyd's subject occupies one room containing a powerful light source, while the photographic paper occupies the adjacent 'camera obscura'. Connecting the two rooms is a lens set within a bellows -- an accordion-like contraption dating from the medium's beginnings.
Learoyd's images are unique direct-positives produced without a negative. Exposures often last eight hours and the photographs are made by the direct record of light reflecting from the subject to the photographic paper. The resulting portraits have an unsettling emotional intensity.
Learoyd's work has recently been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Gift of the artist.
Learoyd's images are unique direct-positives produced without a negative. Exposures often last eight hours and the photographs are made by the direct record of light reflecting from the subject to the photographic paper. The resulting portraits have an unsettling emotional intensity.
Learoyd's work has recently been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Gift of the artist.