Miles Aldridge: Doll Face

2 April - 10 May 2009

Miles Aldridge's images depict a stupendously glossy and magnetically vibrant world with ultra slick, hyper-lit models and signature acid tones. Standing out among contemporary fashion and figurative photography for its luminous composition and for the mysterious situations he has created, these aspects of his practice both derive and simultaneously depart from the work of artists which Hamiltons has represented over the decades, including Horst, Penn and Avedon. Cinematic expression marks Aldridge's work and it is not surprising therefore that his dreamlike, erotic style has drawn comparisons with the work of Bergman, Dali, David Lynch, Hitchcock and Godard amongst others.

 

"If the world were pretty enough, I'd shoot on location all the time. But the world is just not being designed with aesthetics as a priority. So I prefer to rebuild it instead of photographing the real one. What I'm trying to do is take something from real life and reconstruct it in a cinematic way."  Aldridge goes on to say "That's why an hour and a half of an Antonioni movie is so much more interesting to me than an hour and a half of real life. Because it's condensed emotion, condensed colour, condensed light."

 

Miles Aldridge, born in 1964, lives and works in London. He has published several books of photographs, including The Cabinet, 2007, Acid Candy, 2008 and Miles Aldridge: Pictures for Photographs, 2009. His work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions with pieces residing in many significant private and public collections, including the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.