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Published in Artforum, Summer 2009
So is Riddy a romantic or a realist? That such an uncertainty can exist is a function of the extreme subtlety of this photographer’s image-world. Exploring muted ranges of color and tone, and often representing unremarkable locations that would never make it into any tourist guide to London… the ten landscape-format color photographs that comprise “Low Relief” invite descriptors such as “quiet,” “subdued,” or even “self-effacing.” ‘London (Weston Street), 2009’, offers the most extreme example. The evenly dark-toned picture of part of a railway arch near London Bridge station in essence, an invitation to stare at a brick wall… Janus-like, the image has two faces, one dingy and banal and the other unexpectedly beautiful.
Related Artists: John Riddy
Related Exhibitions: JOHN RIDDY: LOW RELIEF Photographs of London
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