TABACCHI at Day, Italian architecture street photography from the Richard Heeps series, A Short History of Milan. The traditional Italian Tobacconist shop, here in a Swiss Cottage style building set against a vast urban apartment block.
'A Short History of Milan' began in November 2018 for a special project featured at the Affordable Art Fair Milan 2019. There is a reoccurring linear, structural theme throughout the series, capturing the Milanese use of materials in design such as glass, metal, wood and stone. Richard has a strong connection to Northern Italy from printing his books in Verona, to visiting Milan many times to exhibit. The work here is a series he has been sketching ideas for a while, and is his first body of Italian work, capturing the spirit of Milan. It sits alongside his street photography work capturing Hong Kong, Vietnam and New York, which depict the fingerprint of cities through colour, fabric and structure with a distinct style.
The artwork is a limited edition gloss photographic print from negative. When framed the print is dry-mounted to aluminium, presented in a museum board white window mount and a choice of black or white box frame handmade professionally in the UK. It is signed and numbered on reverse accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Handmade to order.
Please Note : Viewing on a backlit screen might affect true to life colours. Due to the handmade nature of Richard's darkroom photography there can be slight variations in image and borders, sizes stated are a close approximation.
Sizes may vary slightly from image to image as we make each composition from the negative individually, either showing Richard's signature ragged edge (white border) as he prints full frame or showing the film rebate (black border) often showing the film make. Where the image size varies we adjust the window mount in order to maintain a frame size so like for like sizes can hang together.
Artwork Description
Richard makes the c-type prints from negative in his own analogue colour darkroom in Cambridge. His paper of choice is Kodak Professional Endura Premier Gloss. When Richard has chosen to evolve the artwork, we work with Streamline Colour Lab. In our studio the print is dry-mounted to dibond which ensures a very flat image surface in both the short and long term. The prints are matted (window mounted) using a museum quality 100% cotton rag board especially manufactured to be compatible with the C-type archival Kodak photographic paper Richard uses. Richard does all mounting himself, using his precision engineering background to create the finished artwork. Eleanor fits the artworks to the frames. Traditionally photographic prints are signed and numbered on the back, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. They can be signed on the front of the mount by request. If you would like us to make a larger artwork that is possible, the sizes listed are the largest we can make in our darkroom but we can go larger with our printing partners so please get in touch to discuss it.
Framing Description
Our frames are hand-made in the UK by Menor Photographic Fine Art Printing & Framing Specialists in Hertfordshire. We offer a choice of black or white wooden box frames which have depth to suit the size of the picture, the artwork set back from the glass. Our black frames are made from matt ebony stained obeche, in which you can see the detail of the wood grain whereas our white frames are made from beech and the wood grain is not visible. The wood is sustainably forested for both variations of frame. Artglass AR 70™ is a premium anti-reflective glass used by the finest museums around the world. If you would like to present you artwork in another way, we offer the choice to buy an unframed print only and can advise you on other options or recommend reputable companies to carry out the work.