Art / Photobooks
The Mount Without hosts exhibition from award-winning Bristol photographer Chris Rydlewski
Chris Rydlewski has been living and working in Bristol for 45 years, working for the vast majority of that time as a freelance photographer and photography lecturer at City of Bristol College.
Since his retirement, he has focused on personal projects, mainly on photographing his beloved France where he has for many years been a frequent visitor.
Following 23, La Creuse (2016) and the award-winning Searching for your Shadow (2021), Rydlewski has now published the third in his “unanticipated trilogy” of France-inspired limited-edition photobooks.
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Chris Rydlewski – photo: Ewa Rydlewska
Soon to feature in a solo exhibition at The Mount Without, Confluence is a collection of 34 diptychs of the Creuse region in central France, together encapsulating what he calls “a cumulative sense of place”.
Although his decision to pair images together came quite by chance, it makes sense of Rydlewski’s aesthetic to present them serially, rather than as standalone pieces.
“A confluence is a flowing together, a merging, notably of rivers and streams,” he reflects in his preface to the book.
“The work here is designed to be slow and meditative, echoing my photographic working practice: a detached, yet attuned walking, observing and making photographs, a rural cousin of the urban flaneur (the observant stroller).
“Some images were made during day-to-day life, while others were specific exploratory trips.
“There are intentionally no people in these images, avoiding the distraction of biography. I have a strong sense that we migrate through our environment. We leave our traces but our environs will remain long after we have departed.”
Chris Rydlewski: Confluence is out now, along with previously published photobooks Searching for Your Shadow and 23, La Creuse. Find out more at www.chrisrydlewski.co.uk.
The exhibition launches with a preview eveining at The Mount Without on September 29, and then runs on September 30, October 2-5, 8-10 and 15-19 (10am-6pm).
All photos (unless specified): Chris Rydlewski
Read more: Jamie Murray’s exhibition at SERCHIA Gallery was inspired by conversations by former prisoners
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