Hello, 2020
Miles Aldridge

Miles Aldridge Hello / Screenprint / signed, numbered / edition 15

Material: 410 gsm Somerset paper

Hello and I Will Love You Tomorrow are the first screenprints from a new series by Miles Aldridge entitled Subtitles. Printed on 410 gsm Somerset paper in three passes – a matt halftone dot, a high gloss black border and the subtitles in a satin acid yellow.

‘This series of screenprints extends and enhances the influence of cinema on the photographic practice of Miles Aldridge, further exploring the mood and allure of theatrically constructed images. Artifice is everywhere in these screenprints, proposing figure, setting and event as both immediate and static – reprising the aesthetic of the tableau vivant as it might be conceived by Luis Buñuel or Eric Rohmer. Aldridge has long been fascinated by the transposition of suspense – as it might occur in film noir – to the mise-en-scene of sexually loaded pictorial narratives. These narratives, here broken down into the film-still idiom of individual sub-titled scenes, become at once visually amplified and ambiguous. Pictorially, each screenprint depicts an open-ended dramatic image that calls on both the coldness and glamour of Pop art. While proposing a scene with dialogue – the urbane high passion of European cinema is implied – they resemble frozen fragments of mass media. Insoluble mysteries, as present yet remote as a billboard, acting in silence.’

Miles Aldridge: Virgin Mary. Supermarkets. Popcorn - Berlin 2024

The Swedish photography museum Fotografiska opened its Berlin branch in September 2023 on 5,500 square meters in the historic Kunsthaus Tacheles on Oranienburger Straße in Mitte.
Emerging and internationally established artists: Fotografiska in Berlin exhibits works by the world's best photographers. With outstanding photography exhibitions and a diverse cultural program, the museum is establishing itself as an open cultural center in the capital city of Berlin. Fotografiska Berlin will be the fourth branch of the Fotomuseum alongside the museums in Stockholm, New York and Tallinn.
The exhibition "Virgin Mary. Supermarkets. Popcorn" with artworks by Miles Aldridge opens in Berlin. The Briton has been one of the most sought-after international fashion photographers since the 1990s and achieved fame through his highly stylized, psychedelic style with quotes from film, art history and pop culture.
Miles Aldridge's elaborately staged images are reminiscent of film sets. Immaculately smooth surfaces and stereotypical femininity enhance the artificial effect of the images, which are rendered in a palette of rich and shimmering hues and all photographed on film. Nothing is represented on the computer, all the photographed motifs have been recreated in the studio.
The exhibition in Berin reflects the cosmos of Miles Aldridge
The Virgin Mary refers to the religious paintings of artists such as Caravaggio, who create theatrical moments through dramatic lighting, costumes and staging. The supermarket is a metaphor for consumer society and the hope of self-optimization through the therapeutic effect of consumption. Finally, popcorn stands for the influence of cinema in Aldridge's work. Directors such as Hitchcock, Lynch and Fellini served as a source of inspiration.
The Miles Aldridge exhibition at Fotografiska Berlin is Miles Aldridge's (*1964, London) largest retrospective to date with around 80 pictures. A major exhibition already took place at FRANK FLUEGEL GALERIE in 2018. Among the series is (after Cattelan) from 2015, in which the artist Maurizio Cattelan invited Aldridge to react to Cattalan's sculptures over the course of a night together in a Paris museum.

About the artist Miles Aldridge
Miles Aldridge was born in London in 1964 and became interested in photography at an early age when he was given a Nikon F camera by his father, the famous art director Alan Aldridge. He later studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins and graduated with a BA in 1987. His creative output includes large format C-Type prints, Polaroids, screen prints, photogravures and drawings. He is one of the few photographers who still photographs predominantly on film