John Riddy

John Riddy is one of the most highly lauded English photographers to emerge during the 2000s. His subject matter typically revolves around landscapes, cities, and architecture, in addition to questions related to how our perceptions self and reality are influenced or changed by various spaces. His images are often completely depopulated; the few cars, buildings, statues, or animals that do appear essentially act as surrogates for the humans who might conceivably pass through these spaces.

Riddy's 2004 chromogenic print Utrecht, 2004 shows the interior of a Bauhaus-inspired home, replete with modernist furniture and appurtenances in red, yellow, black, white, and blue. The space appears to echo Le Corbusier’s simultaneously optimistic and eerie pronouncement that “homes are machines for living in,” as the work is at once inviting and efficient but also inhuman and supremely aesthetic.

Riddy has exhibited his work at the Tate Britain, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, Switzerland.