Antaeus Theatre Company on Monday 9th September 2019 between 7pm - 9pm
Rory's Selah exhibition will take place at the Antaeus Theatre Company (Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center 110 E. Broadway Glendale, CA 91205) on Monday 9th September 2019 between 7pm - 9pm.
Limited Tickets are available all the proceeds will be donated to The Antaeus Theatre Company. Rory will also be offering a series of limited edition prints of his work.
The Neophyte (First Experience of the Monastery) was painted by Gustave Doré in 1866-68. He took his subject from George Sand's contemporary novel Sipiridion, in which a young novice, Brother Angel, bemoans his isolation behind the cloister wall. Doré heightens the youth's desolation by contrasting his tense posture and youthfulness with the row of bent and decrepit old men. Doré himself noted the grim humor of the young man's predicament and quipped, He will be over the wall tonight.
Roy Lewis explains the project and sitting with the group.
I'm currently working on a new series entitled Selah, taking its inspiration from master artists such as Caravaggio, Ribera and Gustave Doré. The exhibition features famous actors and interesting faces. The collection will be exhibited in London and Los Angeles in 2019-20.
The Neophyte Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré (1832-1883), throughout my career has continued to inspire my work. I even wrote my dissertation on his illustrations of The Crusades. One of his most famous pieces The Neophyte shows a young man in a monastery with other monks who are much older and appear to be worn out or suffering. During my last working visit to Los Angeles, I had to chance to recreate the painting with six remarkable actors, Tony Amendola, Peter Van Norden, Leo Marks, Bo Foxworth, James Sutorius and Frank Weitzel.
Before the age of 30 Doré created over 100,000 pieces. His art spread to an unprecedented degree in Europe and the United States, both during his lifetime and after his death. He was one of the great purveyors of European culture with his illustrations of major classics.
There seemed to be no limits to Doré's creative talents; a draughtsman, caricaturist, illustrator, water colourist, painter and sculptor, he was a protean artist who worked in the main genres and formats of his era, ranging from satire to religion, and from sketches to monumental canvases.
The painting tickles the imagination, what is in the mind of the Neophyte. Is he young and idealistic? Is he wise beyond his years? Is he arrogant? What is the nature of the other monks. Are they burned-out? Disillusioned?
The portrait photoshoot enabled me to create a living depiction of the work. I chose for the Character of The Neophyte. the very talented Leo Marks. Initially I placed in his mind the character of a young monk and in the minds of the others the roles of the older monks, either sleeping, concentrating or reading. However, I decided to simplify my direction by asking the actors to imagine that they are not priests, but instead that they are waiting at a bus stop. Each with a different reason to be sitting, directing Leo. I said imagine you are a wanted man and that myself the photographer has recognised you. This allowed us to create the facade he was the odd one out, just as Doré had created in his depiction. It is my belief that art should be simple, keeping your direction uncomplicated and straightforward.
All about Rory Lewis
Rory Lewis is a dedicated portrait photographer who has spent over a decade capturing many of the world's most recognised faces. Sitters have included the likes of William Shatner, David Cameron, Sir Derek Jacobi, Iain Glen and Natalie Dormer. Rory's images have been exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic, and several of his iconic portraits have been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London. His recent project, 'Soldiery', which documented the British Army of the 21st Century, was completed over a two year period and has been hailed as a national success story, named by the BBC as 'The changing face of the British Army'. Rory divides his time between London and Los Angeles, working with a wide variety of clients. In addition to his projects and private portraits, his photography has been commissioned by Pepsi, Universal, the British Army, The Times, The Guardian and Cancer Research UK, among others. Rory draws immense inspiration from the masters of art including Hans Holbein the Younger, Titian, Caravaggio and Jusepe de Ribera.
Sebastião Salgado traveled the Brazilian Amazon and photographed the unparalleled beauty of this extraordinary region for six years: the forest, the rivers, the mountains, the people who live there - an irreplaceable treasure of humanity.
In the book's foreword Salgado writes: "For me, it is the last frontier, a mysterious universe of its own, where the immense power of nature can be felt as nowhere else on earth. Here is a forest stretching to infinity that contains one-tenth of all living plant and animal species, the world's largest single natural laboratory."
Salgado visited a dozen indigenous tribes that exist in small communities scattered across the largest tropical rainforest in the world. He documented the daily life of the Yanomami, the Asháninka, the Yawanawá, the Suruwahá, the Zo'é, the Kuikuro, the Waurá, the Kamayurá, the Korubo, the Marubo, the Awá, and the Macuxi - their warm family bonds, their hunting and fishing, the manner in which they prepare and share meals, their marvelous talent for painting their faces and bodies, the significance of their shamans, and their dances and rituals.
Sebastião Salgado has dedicated this book to the indigenous peoples of Brazil's Amazon region: "My wish, with all my heart, with all my energy, with all the passion I possess, is that in 50 years' time this book will not resemble a record of a lost world. Amazônia must live on."Soon available in a Collector's Edition including a bookstand designed by Renzo Piano and four Art Editions, each including the Renzo Piano bookstand and a signed print.
Photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020, The Day May Break is the first part of a global series by acclaimed photographer Nick Brandt, portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.
The people in these photographs were all affected by climate change, displaced by cyclones and years-long droughts. Photographed at five sanctuaries, the animals were rescues that can never be rewilded. As a result, it was safe for human strangers to be close to them, photographed so close to them, within the same frame. The fog on location is the unifying visual motif, conveying the sense of an ever-increasing limbo, a once-recognizable world now fading from view. However, despite their respective losses, these people and animals have survived, and therein lies possibility and hope.
From 1988 to 1991 Dawoud Bey made a series of portraits of African Americans in the streets of various American cities. Using a large format tripod mounted camera and a unique positive/negative Polaroid film that created both an instant print and a reusable negative, he asked a cross section of the populations of these communities to pose for him, creating a space of self presentation and performance in the streets of the urban environment. As part of every encounter, Bey gave each person a small black-and-white Polaroid print for themselves as a way of reciprocating and returning something to the people who had allowed him to make their portrait. Defying racial stereotypes, the resulting portraits reveal the Black subjects in all of their psychologically rich complexity, presenting themselves openly and intimately to the camera, the viewer, and the world.
A new installment in Miles Aldridge's ongoing homage to, and plea for the revival of, Polaroid film
The sequel to Miles Aldridge's (born 1964) Please Return Polaroid (2016), this book presents new and vintage Polaroids from the British photographer's more than 20-year archive, in a seemingly random sequence shaped by a dreamlike logic and surprising juxtapositions.
Please Please Return Polaroid explores Aldridge's dedication to analogue processes where cut-and-paste is still a manual process, made with scissors, gaffer tape, intuition and not a little patience. Aldridge continues to use Polaroids as part of his work-in-progress “sketches,” often scratching, tearing and taping them together, even drawing over them; each mark part of the creative act.
Known for creating immaculate photos of a less than perfect world, Aldridge revels in these unpolished images, transforming some into extreme enlargements filling double pages with their reworked and damaged surfaces.
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