(after) Whistlejacket - Contemporary Equine Photographs by John Reardon

MMX Gallery is proud to present "(after) Whistlejacket", an exhibition of work by the late British photographer, John Reardon.

The racehorse series of images was commissioned by the Darley Stud and some of them were used for their sales catalogues. The show explores an artistic way of photographing horses, on its own for example a hoof becomes a fashion statement, just like a Christian Louboutin in Vogue, alongside beautiful portraits of winning stallions.
There are colour and black and white prints including a selection of original gelatin silver prints. It is the first time these images have been exhibited.

“These photographs of thoroughbred stallions, began as a half-derided summer job – ‘Just commercial work!’ John would wince, appalled by the revolting vulgarity of privilege and prosperity. It lasted 16 years, almost until his death at 66, five years ago. Back when it all began – on the eve of his 50th birthday and after photographing 14 wars and untold natural disasters for news pages and Sunday supplements, the kind of stark, stylish foreign forays that newspaper budgets would less and less stretch to – he might have feared that he was retiring to grass. In fact, it was to be one last wild ride.

For weeks at a stretch, it took him to Ireland and France, Kentucky and Japan, Australia and, of course, Newmarket.

Every year, Reardon re-invented his challenge. He photographed stallions with a special 70mm panoramic Leica, turning the line of neck, withers, back and quarters into lush landscapes. He created a portable studio of all-white walls and had the stallions stare into his lens as if they were movie stars. One year, he went to photograph every major race, wherever it was run, anywhere in the world: he’d unfailingly find the story and tell it in a few startling frames – ever eclectic, ever hectic. He was out at dawn. He was there at dusk. He climbed trees to get a better view and once inadvertently buzzed the Sheikh in his private swimming pool while hanging out of a helicopter.

Thousands of rolls of film. And when you look at one or two of them – spread out on a lightbox, through a Lupe, yellow Chinagraph poised: the way he insisted we all did for as long as he could hold the digital world at bay – you see what an extraordinary gift he had. 36 exposures, at least 20-25 different scenes or set-ups. Yes, he’d work a shot; but mostly he got what he wanted first time and that was that, he’d moved on, gone, tirelessly creative, his imagination fizzing like a lit fuse.

Racehorses, and the people in their realm, turned out to be his ideal subjects. Reardon’s eye found the elegance, power, and plaintive vulnerability of whatever settled before his camera, and the thoroughbred is abound with elegance, power and vulnerability. He stared down from his rakish 6ft 3in with the most humane, even sentimental, of gazes. You see it across his work, across the years: people – and horses – rarely look better than in their John Reardon portrait. Click, duck, move, click. It might have started out as a job, but eventually it became his oeuvre.” *

Addendum: *An Essay by journalist, adviser and an expert on Thoroughbred Bloodlines, Jocelyn Targett, accompanying the exhibition is available on the gallery website

Please contact gallery for PDF with available works and prices. Email: info@mmxgallery.com