Richard Renaldi
Western Lives

The exhibition "Richard Renaldi: Western Lives," is a combination of three different photographic projects from 2004-2006: The Great Plains, Bus Travelers, and Navajo Nation. The impetus and spark behind all three is the same in that Renaldi photographs people of all ages and walks of life through a vast stretch of the country that is probably considered off the radar in terms of the urban centers on each coast. He also tends to focus somewhat on closed communities, as least in the temporary--the random gatherings of disparate folks in bus terminals, residents of small towns in the middle of the Great Plains or the various peoples comprising the Navajo Nation of Arizona. Renaldi's forthright presentation of his subjects, mostly centered within the image and straight forwardly facing the camera, telegraph a certain confidence in who they are, how they present themselves to the world, and what their expectations are from this particular weighted interaction. For the most part, the personae of these three series are embedded in the locales and vast stretches of the country that are as forgettable, numbing, and anonymous to some as they are beautiful, extraordinary, stark, and gorgeous to others.

Renaldi encapsulates and offers a most precious intimacy with his subjects. They reveal themselves to him and to us in the fraught interaction that photography creates between subject, artist, and viewer. There is no attempt on the part of the artist or subject to implicitly dramatize or heroicize their situation, even though the images are staged and planned with full participation on both sides. They do not look as such, which makes all the difference. The process by which Renaldi creates this work is more cumbersome and time-consuming than the images implicitly convey. The photographs are composed to look like the subjects were just happened upon and snapped in an instant. The 8 x 10 Wisner camera that Renaldi sets up with the tripod is cumbersome and oversized, with the entire process and interaction sometimes taking up to ten minutes to complete.

Renaldi's portraits are not objective studies on the sociology of place or a rigid categorization of a certain subculture, but are highly subjective and suggestive realms of personality imbued by their rather stark surroundings. There is a surprising candor about these portraits as these strangers, coaxed by the photographer, have opened up their lives to us for all sorts of judgments and emotions: visual aesthetic pleasure, derision, boredom, fascination, and quite possibly feeling nothing at all. The tension and persuasive quality of the images rewards close looking and arises from being both timeless and of the moment simultaneously.

The artist is currently living in New York City, where he received his BA in photography from New York University in 1990. He has had solo gallery exhibitions in both Los Angeles and New York and was featured in the International Center of Photography's first triennial of photography in 2003. Aperture has recently published the first monograph, Figure/Ground relating to seven years of the artist's projects.

Richard Renaldi
The Plains

Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to announce The Plains, an exhibition of color photographs by Richard Renaldi. The exhibition will open on Thursday, January 25, and close on Saturday, March 3, with a reception for the artist on Thursday, January 25, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. This will be Mr. Renaldi’s first solo exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery and will include a selection of works from 2004 to the present.

Richard Renaldi : LA Street 2004

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 Garcia 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.

In Fresno/Newark , Mr. Renaldi uses his eight by ten to describe some of the people of these two cities, at once separated and connected by a continent and a culture.   Portraying individuals from various backgrounds, Mr. Renaldi also describes the cities in question.   It is sometimes difficult to tell the locales apart, so thorough has the acculturation of North America been. At the same time, the people Mr. Renaldi portrays are individuals both typical and idiosyncratic.   Mr. Renaldi's approach to his subject is that of the street documentarian; scouting his location, the photographer invites people who interest him to sit for their portrait. While doing so, Mr. Renaldi also begins a photographic survey of the place. In this sense, the portrait of the individual becomes a topographical study of the physical and cultural environment, and vice versa.

In Jana , Mr. Renaldi depicts a girl of nine standing in the doorframe of a storefront, hair and head wrapped in a purple scarf, feet expertly negotiating a pair of rollerblades, eyes locked on the camera lens, and by extension, on the eyes of the photographer and the viewer. While Jana wears the jeans and tee shirt typical of kids her age, she is typical in no other way.   In the windows at her side are displayed the oddball detritus of everyday living:   a lamp, gallon containers of floor adhesive,   an inflatable pink elephant, a crocheted throw. Whether the items have anything to do directly with Jana is unclear. Is the storefront her home, a hangout, or simply the random spot where she and the photographer met? Whether the city is Fresno or Newark is almost impossible to tell; it is only the dried magnolia leaves around Jana's feet that suggest the locale is Fresno.

It is against the monotonies of dominant American culture and its catalogue of banal signifiers that the politic underlying Mr. Renaldi's project comes out. In all these images, it is not the long list of items that surround, clothe or otherwise clutter the field which identify the individual as a person. It is their gaze, the way they carry themselves, the way they interact with one another, the photographer and the viewer that reveals their personality and humanity. These are at the base of Mr. Renaldi's work, and are what make Mr. Renaldi's a photography of humanism.

Mr. Renaldi most recently exhibited in Strangers , the International Center for Photography's first triennial. In 2004 he will have a solo exhibition at Western Project in Los Angeles. Mr. Renaldi has exhibited at Gracie Mansion Gallery, Feature, and the 494 Gallery. His work has appeared in New York Magazine, Jane, Time Out/New York, the Village Voice, Blue , and many other publications. Mr. Renaldi divides his time between New York City and Los Angeles.

Debs & Co.   June 20th - July 28th, 2002

In the project room:
Richard Renaldi,
Madison Avenue Portraits

For this series of photographs, Mr. Renaldi sets up a large wooden 8 by 10 camera on Madison Avenue, and requests permission of passers-by to photograph them. The subjects are gorgeous ethnographic recitations of cultural markings of the limited field from fur to Fendi. Much as in painting of the Northern European Renaissance, Mr. Renaldi describes the world of the portrayed in a precise cataloguing of accoutrement and affect. Mr. Renaldi has exhibited at Gracie Mansion Gallery, Feature, and the 494 Gallery. His work has appeared in New York Magazine, Jane, Time Out/New York, the Village Voice, and many other publications. He received his BFA in photography from New York University.