Miles Alridge at The Lumiere Brothers Center: The Taste of Color
by Elena Bozhich and Sofya Frolova
Miles Alridge is known to be 'The King of Color' in fashion photography. The Lumiere Brothers Photography center hosts his first exhibition 'The Taste of Color' where visitors can see what His Majesty is capable of.
You've probably seen Alridge's pieces of art on covers of magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, GQ. Perfectly adjusting to beauty perceptions in the fashion industry, they are utterly ironic at the same time. The photographer conveys his frustration with the ideals of the world of consumerism.
Alridge approaches photography like a movie director: through thorough thought. His work begins long before he takes his camera, he starts from several drawings and Polaroid images. His illustration education (and heritage – his father was the one who created the covers for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones) reflects his attention towards the frame.
Alridge approaches photography like a movie director: through thorough thought. His work begins long before he takes his camera, he starts from several drawings and Polaroid images. His illustration education (and heritage – his father was the one who created the covers for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones) reflects his attention towards the frame.
Choosing The Lumiere Brothers Center for the exhibition was a great idea.
Its regular visitors are true connoisseurs of photography. This time The Center has outdone itself. More than fifty renowned Alridge's works were placed on flashy pink and yellow walls, covered with rainbow ribbons. True burst of colors. Never before has the name of the exhibition been so right.
Its regular visitors are true connoisseurs of photography. This time The Center has outdone itself. More than fifty renowned Alridge's works were placed on flashy pink and yellow walls, covered with rainbow ribbons. True burst of colors. Never before has the name of the exhibition been so right.
| In the middle of the frame, Alridge always puts an attractive woman, but she is more of an object than a person: a beautiful doll with either blank or frustrated face surrounded by an intense environment. Both series 'Home works' and 'I Only Want You To Love Me' are acid satires of woman's roles as housewives, mothers or lovers. A curious fact: one of the photographs depicts a female sitting in a corner of the room with a shattered tray with food in front of her. The frame hangs in the corner of the exhibition hall. Colors of the picture are screamingly bright, but the lady's face is pale and her hair is well-styled but looks faded. She's like a trapped animal, and everyone coming feels as if they are predators or hunters. Photo: Vogue Italia, May 2014 |
At the exhibition, there are lots of informational stands about the artist's life. They present some facts, which explain where Alridge takes inspiration from. Did you know that female characters from Alridge's pictures are reflections of his mother? He remembered her as a good-looking woman with expressionless face, who was feeling unsettled in her life of a housewife. Growing with such a woman being your mother must've been hard. Is it possible that so-called 'mommy issues' have developed Alridge's talent? Probably, it is.
The next stop is at a bright work "A Drop of Red, 2001", which urges us to pay attention to the culture of consumption. The shot shows only the shoes of a young girl standing on the checkered floor, like Alice in Wonderland. The floor and shoes are splattered with a blood-red mass that flows from a broken Heinz ketchup bottle. It was a real-life situation which gave him an idea for this photo. Once, Miles's wife accidentally broke a ketchup bottle, and he liked the drama that resulted from the accident. Returning later to this situation, Aldridge deliberately used bright red paint instead of ketchup, so that the color seemed unnaturally rich. This trick helped to turn the domestic circumstance into a tragedy.
Vogue Italia, May 2012
Glenn O'Brien
(from Introduction to Acid Candy)
“
"Miles Aldridge constructs dreams. That is his artistic and commercial practice. He understands the essential ingredients of the dream and he uses impeccable instinct in crafting something like "stills" from the fractured narratives that we normally experience nocturnally and unconsciously. He creates these dreams while illustrating today's fashions for their potential buyers. A dream can make you conquer a new land or buy a new hat or a painting or a philosophy. Aldridge knows that dreams are an exquisite tapestry of right and wrong, a chain of happenings in which what is "right," that is what is logical or normal, conflicts with what is wrong, what defies our waking order of things, our expectations and sensibility. Dreams disrupt what is perceived as reality. Dreams happen to some people. And some people make them happen".
Vogue Italia, August 2005
Of course, Alridge is an outstanding, unique photographer. His works are stored in the collections of the world's major museums such as the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the International Center for Photography (ICP) (New York). Therefore, it is an honour for all the visitors of The Lumiere Brothers Center to see these masterpieces in reality.
