Your key to immortality,” Richard Underwood, NASA’s chief of photography in the 1960s said to Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong, “is in the quality of the photographs and nothing else.” via @aperturefnd #hasselblad #nasa #photography #moonlanding50th
Cosmology of Light
Light is to a photographer the substance that gives shape to the world.”
The story has it that on the first day, the Divine created all matter. He then wanted to create light, so he could sit back and admire the work he had just accomplished.
Light is what makes our world visible. It outlines rocky capes, bathes valleys, and sparkles at the tip of waves. It lends its warmth to autumn, and gets pale in the winter. It wakes us up in the morning, and takes us back to sleep at night.
I sometimes find myself in proper awe of these celestial spectacles. I am reminded that light isn’t of a terrestrial nature, it is a cosmic force. It reaches us all the way from a star, that fireball hanging in the sky a hundred fifty million kilometers away. Without its warmth and clarity, life wouldn’t be possible on Earth, and of course, there would be no photography.
Over the course of my adventures, I have familiarized myself with its many moods, and made it into an ally. Light is the muse, the source, the carrier, and the one from which, when it disappears, I await the return.
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Heroes in the making
Comiccon is a theater in which everyone becomes author and actor of their own character.”
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images © 2019-2022 Rico Michel
These portraits of cosplayers were photographed on medium format analog film during the 2019 and 2022 editions of Montreal Comiccon.
“She slips into a character’s skin like one puts on a new dress; already, behind the looking glass, appears a version of the world in which everything still is possible.”
An artist’s headspace
Photographers are realists,
artists are mystics.”
This series portrays significant Montreal artists and their creative environment. Painters, sculptors, writers and musicians are photographed on classic analog film.
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images © 2018-2020 Rico Michel Read
Portraits
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images © 2018-2025 Rico Michel Read
Live and Well
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images © 2018-2022 Rico Michel
A life’s work
“Photography is a way of learning to read your culture.” — Joel Meyerowitz
It started to dawn on me that everything I had photographed up until that point was just some sort of preparation to provide me with the insight to make those pictures. And that was my life’s work.”
Christopher Anderson, Magnum photographer and New York Times contributor
“Reveries” Exhibition
I sometimes wonder if these images aren’t dreams I made in a moment of reverie.”
Reveries is a photographic portrait of Montreal and its people shot on classic analog film. The exhibition featured nineteen black and white prints and was held in 2018 at Montreal’s legendary artisan brewery Le Cheval blanc.
Far from a factual record of our time, this collection of ready-made memories was assembled during countless wanderings in the heart of a fleeting city.
The series borrows from the visual language of the photo reportage, but isn’t set in a precise timeline or linked to a particular event.
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Pushes and pulls
A person’s work can only reflect their own personal drives, hesitations and fears — all of the different internal pulls that will balance each other to form an individual’s own approach to life. For me, the best things in life involve sharing. As a mere mortal I am not completely selfless, but ultimately, my goal is to leave behind images that will survive my own ephemerality. I wish for these images to be meaningful enough in themselves to be able to connect with the people of the future.
You are taking a real picture in real time no matter how conceptual it is. ”
Annie Leibovitz, from Taschen’s “Annie’s Album” interview
Midsummer Reverie
Midsummer Reverie is a short documentary film about midsummer in Montreal, Quebec, shot in July 2017. The idea follows from my work both as a street photographer and as a musician, bringing these labours of love together in one small homage to my home city, Montreal. Camera and Soundtrack by Rico.
Analog callings
In today’s virtualized world, light-sensitive film has in itself become somewhat of a myth. It is a fragile object, a mysterious anachronism seemingly endowed with time-traveling powers.
The extra-long lasting flavor
Most of the time, taking photographs on analog film won’t be your wisest, most practical choice. Although the negative is a real, physical object, its qualities are mostly intangible; could this only be a fascination for a certain mystique?
Personally, I simply have more love for the analog rendering of film. One thing is for certain, film doesn’t speak of things that are happening right now. Film is the anti-instantaneous, the extra-long lasting flavor.
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