Yesterday I met up with Richard and Seth for a late lunch (if you’re in the West Villiage and looking for a top-notch falafel sandwich, try this place) and to recieve a copy of Richard’s wonderful monograph, Figure and Ground.

I’ve lost count of the number of occasions that I’ve left a bookstore thinking to myself, “I should’ve bought it that time.” I have to say, though, I’m very glad that I didn’t rush it. It’s so nice to have the opportunity to get a book directly from an artist.

Figure and Ground presents portraits and landscapes taken from coast to coast, across the United States - images drawn from more than seven years of work.

Richard Renaldi is a photographer in love with looking. He searches for the brief encounter, that fleeting moment when a stranger opens his life to him and, consequently, to the viewer. His trust in the descriptive and empathic ability of the camera verges on that of his nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century predecessors. Can we gain insight into the person in front of us simply by staring fixedly into his face, by capturing his figure in crisp detail on film? Renaldi leads us to believe, despite rumor to the contrary, we just might.

I love portraits of people that are made in transitory spaces. These moments feel that much more fleeting. I have a few personal favorites from the book, one of them being the image of a man sitting with his bags, waiting.

David, Oklahoma City, 2005 (Nocona, Texas to Defiance, Ohio)
© Richard Renaldi

The scene is outwardly simple. However, in its stillness and quiet, the reflective experience of traveling alone is described by the man’s soft inward expression.

Renaldi’s work melds two classic photographic genres—portrait and straight landscape—into a single descriptive frame that speaks as much to a sense of the individuals before the lens as it does to the spaces they inhabit. The omnivorous film-plane of Renaldi’s 8-by-10 camera embraces not only the individuals directly in front of it, but the environment that encompasses them as well.

Amena, Newark, New Jersey, 2002
© Richard Renaldi

I’m happy to finally have a copy of this beautiful book.

Thanks again, Richard.

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