We're excited to share that Richard Learoyd's 2018 work Yosemite IV (BGV) is part of our current exhibition, From the Roster.
Learoyd strips photography down to its essentials, following a historical photographic process invented centuries ago. His direct-positive colour prints are produced using a custom-built, in-studio camera obscura, composed of two dark chambers and a fixed lens which exposes light directly onto photo-sensitive Ilfochrome paper. As the prints are not enlarged from negatives the resulting images are grainless and exceptionally detailed. The artist took his camera obscura to California to photograph Yosemite National Park and produced this magnificent image of the glacial Yosemite Valley within the park. Yosemite means "killer" in the Miwok languages which are spoken by the Indigenous American groups in the area. Yosmite Valley is around 7.5 mi long and 3,000–3,500 ft deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan, and densely forested with pines.
The image below shows Learoyd's huge camera obscura set up in Yosemite to take the photograph as visitors gather around.
Image courtesy of RIchard Learoyd
Learoyd's work was shown in Hamiltons' 2024 exhibition Celebrating Silver as well as the gallery's 2022 show Richard Learoyd & Irving Penn: Flowers, which brought together Learoyd's beautiful photographs of flowers with a selection of Irving Penn's spectacular flora imagery.
Image: Richard Learoyd, Yosemite IV (BGV), 2018 © Richard Learoyd