Each year at our fundraiser RMG Exposed we hold a juried photography competition that strives to increase awareness of contemporary photography while supporting our institution’s education and community programming. Tom Ridout’s entry was the winner of Best Overall Submission at RMG Exposed 2012 and received the RBC Emerging Photography Award. This exhibition is the result.
Ridout’s educational foundation and years of experience in landscape architecture has provided him with an understanding of natural and constructed urban landscapes. This insight forms the basis of his photographic projects. His approach to photography is technical; maximizing clarity, avoiding abstractions of focus, colour manipulation, or perspective distortion. This camera-centred approach refuses computer software from injecting a signature, and instead offers images in clear, highly realistic detail.
In this series, Ridout has studied structures, specifically those that are impacted by scaffolding. In German, the term “eingehüllt” means shrouded, wrapped, or cocooned. The shrouds covering structures ultimately change and inform the understanding of what lies within as the interaction between the original structure and the scaffolding cover together create a visual synergy of light and form.
The add-ons to the architecture are typically there as part of a repair effort, but the result is the creation of a new structure altogether, one that is visually much different than what lies beneath. This temporary carapace redefines our perceptions, and ultimately, can function as an analogy to how we perceive other people, cultures, and environments.