Richard Rinaldi
When I was younger and in art school, I got into tracking contemporary photographers. There was some great work being done. Since I don’t go out of my way looking for it, I haven’t kept up. So I just came across Richard Rinaldi for the first time. Seems like I should have known his work before this.
I was transfixed by his series ‘Touching Others’ where he gets two or more strangers to pose as if they were family. The one caveat is they have to touch in some way. Its pretty incredible to see. Some of the pictures give the illusion that these people have been together for a life time, they are calm and poised together. Other pictures have a tension that is off.
When I saw his pictures for the first time, I didn’t know what was going on. That is probably the best way to experience them (sorry I already spoiled that for you). For example, I thought these two below were married and I thought about this image for so long because it was disturbing me on some level.
Nathan and Robyn - 2012
This one impacted me. and got me looking at Rinaldi’s work in more detail.
More text is coming. I wanted to start a place holder here so I would come back to it.
Check out his website:
Inspiration:
I found Rinaldi because I was looking for this kind of tension for the source materials. I’m using a few of his images for my Etude series.
Further Reading:
I haven’t even explored all of Rinaldi’s work yet. You can check him out at his website.