Richard SCHROEDER

“Une exposition de femmes nues que seule leur rousseur habille et que leur blancheur défend”. Laurent Chalumeau

Exhibitions

2014

Vénus – I’m not like everybody else

SIT DOWN gallery

08.11.2014 – 27.12.2014

Biography

The story goes like this : right after he saw “Blow-Up” Richard Schroeder decided to play rock and make movies by becoming a photographer. The film was forbidden to those aged under 16. Richard was 15 years old and he fulfilled his wish. Before he was 20, the great Jacques Rouchon – his godfather – took him on as an assistant and taught him the trade : image maker, a great profession. Starting with fashion – what young man could resist photographing women ? Then, very quickly, came the music. It’s the late 1970s, the arrival of punk, world changes, Bashung, Gainsbourg, The Clash… First publications, first album covers, first personal works.

Cinema follows, meetings with Lynch, Cronenberg, De Palma… Pictures that we all recognize, especially a series of portraits. Even more than taking pictures, Richard enjoys meeting his subject matter. Spending a few hours with artists, writers, actors, filmmakers, musicians, as well as with unknowns. Meeting the person and then photographing him or her.

Perhaps that’s why his work stands apart. As if he captures a small share of mystery in each portrait, a secret face, a hidden facet, capturing the human identity within us. “Photographing celebrities as unknowns and unknowns as celebrities”, he says. Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Elle, Paris-Match, Première, Le Monde Magazine… Richard brings a very exacting eye to this particular genre. The moment is frozen, not the gaze.

Press images, film posters, plays, advertising, short movies, video clips, art pictures or essays, a passion for black and white images but also a magistral use of color… So many worlds that he sets alight without being consumed by the flames. An ability to keep maintaining and renewing his style : rock-inspired yet pared-down to its purest form : Dylan with his guitar, the evocation of fingers moving on the strings, a forefinger on the shutter. Human faces, a still-life in motion, moving images.

Diastème

Press