Laura  

Madison

Avenue

photographs by Richard Renaldi

 
all images copyright © richard renaldi, 2005. all rights reserved.  

 

 

For as long as I have lived in New York City, I have been intrigued by Madison Avenue for the brashness and exuberance and sometimes even the shamelessness with which wealth is displayed, be it real or imagined. A few of my subjects have inherited or earned their money - the widow, the privileged children, the writer - but most are able only to dream and through dress, manner and poise, give spirited expression to a most human desire.

I made several of these portraits on the sidewalks of the avenue with a large, wooden 8x10 view camera, the others I made with a 35mm camera. When I approach people to ask if they would be willing to pose for me, I am variously met with refusal, aloof complicity, or outright enthusiasm.

Though my camera was manufactured several years ago, its size, brass fittings and vermillion leather bellows seem to recall a period of history when photography still possessed about it a quality of magic and the mystery of new invention. There is something in the grandness of the instrument that is entirely appropriate to the fantasies of these men and women who ply their individual mystique on Madison Avenue like an Edwardian dream.

 

 

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