13 Sep 2017

Robert Richfield: Abridged

Gallery Kayafas

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

Instilled with a love of mighty bridges as a child in Cincinnati, where five of them cross the Ohio River, Robert Richfield set out to photograph them in all of their horizontal grandeur. Early attempts included multiple exposures of 4x5 negatives, which must have been maddening to produce. Digital processes make it easier to stitch together numerous shots into panoramas, which he prints two or three feet high and eight, ten, and twenty feet across.

My initial reaction to this work was that it was a gimmick and I shouldn't let myself like it so easily. It didn't stick. Sometimes an obvious strategy is the right one.

Koninginnebrug Road and De Hef Rail Bridges, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2015) is especially strong, 240 inches wide and pieced together from sequential views of the bridge's draw and drop. It looks like the backbone of a whale being rolled. Another image breaks up the bridge over Buzzard's Bay into rising and falling pieces, as if musical notes scaling a stanza.