Photographer launches new exhibit: “Decadence”
He is known for capturing breathtaking photos in the Belikin Calendars and for his most recent collaboration with the Lifeline Foundation in Project Poverty. And today, noted photographer, Richard Holder, spoke with News Five of a new exhibit entitled Decadence. The exhibit is a repertoire of local and international photographs of people, events and life captured by Holder over a period of ten years. Decadence features a body of photographs from projects the artist has done such as the WE Exhibition and the Havana Biennial including the revealing of a conceptual image that is a sample of a new project on Holder’s latest endeavors. Holder says that Decadence is a retrospective of stunning imagery and a taste of things to come.
Richard Holder, Photographer, Decadence Exhibit
“One of the themes in my art work is photographing people that I find on the street in the studio and in the actual setting of the street. One of the consistent things throughout the photographs is that they are done in black and white and I think black and white has a timeless quality and a way to intrigue much more than colour does with its use of light and darks. So I think within these images there will be a lot for the public to see and feed off of artistically. Decadence offers a variety of different images such as nude photography, it offers street photography—people on the street specifically. As a matter of fact, the subject matter is centered around people. So it’s basically various depictions of people and I think can be interpreted in many different ways. There is also one still life image in decadence; it’s the papaya entrails. There are spiritual images; there’s the last supper, the Madonna. As a matter of fact, the way you interpret and feel about some of these images will be very personal so I expect that within it the audience will find a lot of variety and a lot to feast their eyes on.”
Duane Moody
“Do you feel that any of these people that will come will consider some of the pictures as vulgar?”
Richard Holder
“I don’t think that the art that they will witness in Decadence is in any way vulgar. I think if they depict something interpreted in a vulgar way, it has to do with their limitations. But I feel personally when I look at all those pictures in Decadence, I am not affected in that way. I see something more optimistic in the images.”
The exhibit opens tomorrow night at six-thirty sharp.
