Weekly Post: Richard Renaldi

Richard Renaldi was brought up regarding his series "Touching Strangers" in which he asks complete strangers to pose together for a photograph.

"Renaldi’s objective was to introduce an unpredictable variable into a traditional photographic formula, and to create spontaneous and fleeting relationships between complete strangers. The portraits are extremely difficult to make, involving complex negotiations with the participants that push them past comfort levels, into a physical intimacy normally reserved for loved ones or friends. Touching Strangers creates intimate and ephemeral relationships that exist only for the moment of the photograph. The images are beautiful and strange, crossing out of the zones of safe physical intimacy with strangers and into deep emotional landscapes never photographed before."

Renaldi composes his photographs on an 8x10 view camera, and manages to entice his subjects into allowing him to photograph him, a skill that I struggle with myself, and can appreciate. Renaldi generally does portraiture and street photography, which would prove somewhat of a challenge to do with the camera he chooses, but his ability to make these photographs is admirable. I enjoy the aesthetic of his photographs, but I do sometimes see his compositions as a bit strange, especially in his portraits of people, with their full bodies in the frame, flat towards the camera, centered in the frame. On his blog, Renaldi also explains that he teaches an annual large format portraiture class in order to teach the skill of street photography with a large format view camera to others.