Doing something new in photography isn't easy when you reject digital platforms, collage-like effects obtained by using Photoshop, and other new media devices. But British photographer Richard Learoyd has done something unusual and compelling in his life-size and larger portraits currently on view at the McKee Gallery.

The subjects of his portraits, mostly women, are photographed in repose against a neutral background. Beautiful in an unconventional way, they occupy a shallow field of view due to the camera Learoyd has built, which based on the camera obscura, but fitted with an incredibly sharp lens.

Left to right: Jasmijn, to the Light; Agnes in Red Dress on White Chair; Agnes Nude. Copyright Richard Learoyd, courtesy McKee Gallery.

In the minimal depth of field that results, the figures go from sharp to blurred in a few inches of space, creating what amounts to an optical quandary. Hyper-realistic detail in the skin and clothes quickly fades into unreadable zones that serve to emphasize a sense of mass and dimension that is not among the attributes of film-based photography. The figures become a kind of landscape of the mind in which the time it takes to read the sitters' features and the delicate details of clothing becomes part of the experience of looking at these large-scale images.

In Jasmijn, to the Light, the right side of the woman's face dematerializes into a blur, which serves to heighten the detail in her eyes and her silk blouse. Likewise, the detail on her left sleeve, in which you can almost count the stitches holding it together, drops away around the elbow. The mass of her head and right shoulder falls away, bringing to mind a retreating figure in a quickly fading dream. The same is true in Agnes in Striped Dress. Her corporeal beauty, seen in all its detail in the face, becomes a disembodied vision as, here and there, the figure begins to dissolve at the edges. Utterly contemporary in substance, these images also bring to mind British portraiture of the Victorian era.

There are also several still lifes, including a freshly killed shark, that are interesting as demonstrations of what Learoyd can achieve in terms of pushing his method and materials, as well as drawing from the history of photography. An arrangement of gnarled roots and stems resting on a wooden box recall the 19^th century British photographer William Henry Fox Talbott and his ground-breaking experiments published in The Pencil of Nature.

Last Chance: Richard Learoyd - Unique Photographs closes Saturday, October 31. McKee Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue, 4^th floor. New York, NY. 212.688.5951.

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