REVIEWS

ART OR CRAFT? ASK LAURA
Review by Flaminio Gualdoni

Corriere della Sera, April 7, 2003

The photographer’s job is ”craft of art” par excellence, as the subtitle of Giuliana Scimè’s new book says. In this book, she pours and organizes the fruits of her long militance as a reviewer and historian of photography. Who is the photographer? He is a technician, summoned to regular commitments, bit at the same time he is a creator, that inside and outside those commitments finds the space to assert his independent invention, his personality, his style. Outlining the profiles of a dense group of great authors, from the historical, well known ones to recent talents as Jan Saudek, who builds paradoxical theatres of the body, and Laura Rickus, creator of extraordinary images at the boundaries of fairy tales, Giuliana Scimè offers a scene in which constantly emerges the most reaffirmed question these days: are or aren’t they artists? The answer is in the very structure of the book. When it comes to photography, the distinction is pointless, since it is the substance of the image to make this image a product of craft, or of art, whether it is published on a fashion magazine or exhibited in a museum. Everything else, suggests Giuliana, is just small talk.

LAURA’S FAIRIES
Review by Giuliana Scimè

Corriere della Sera, December 3, 2002

In the era of advanced technology, some authors rebel against photography’s ready made and get the old manuality. Among the most fascinating examples is the work of the young Laura Rickus, who rejects easy solutions to elaborate a complicated process of image transfer. Born in 1967 in the United States, Laura studied fashion design in Boston and Paris and has worked with different designers. She traveled around the world as a model and, in 1996, she passed to the other side of the fence and shouldered the camera. Her images are surprisingly mature. Perhaps her previous experiences refined her taste and her knowledgeable skill in the ability to see. The Mystical encounters exhibition, with Roberto Mutti as curator, is a fantastic trip in the universe of fairy tales. The creatures - women, angels, fairies, nymphs - seem to materialize from the skakespearean plot of A midsummer’s night dream. In her works, on evenly dark backgrounds, these women stand out. They appear as evanescent presences but they don’t lack some subtle sensual calls. Laura succeeded in annihilating the carnality of the body and instill pulsions of earthly weakness in creatures that are unknown, but recalled by the imagination of us all. A sensation exacerbated by the particular quality of printing, large format Polaroid film transferred on watercolor paper, which makes the image material.

SENSUALITY AND INNOCENCE
The multifaceted fantastic universe of Laura Rickus’s expressive magic
Article by Paola Biondi

Photo Italia, December 2002

They have the fascination of one of a kind pieces: each of Laura Rickus’s photographs is different and unrepeatable. The artist, born in Boston thirtyfour years ago, has been living in Milano for over ten years, and it is in this city that she began her career. Not as a photographer, but as a model, and then her studies of art and painting combined with her creativity to give life to works of simple and refined grace, standing half way between photography and painting, thanks to a particular technique. Her style brought up great interest by the critics, and today Laura is at her own fourth personal exhibition in Milano, with a work named Mystical Encounters. ”The protagonists are fairies.” explains Laura ”There are many types of fairies, each one different from the others, and every woman can be a fairy. With the models grew a relationship of complicity.” ’How is a fairy, according to you?’ we were asking each other, and the girls were happy to interpret the role of fairies: the sexy fairy, the angelic fairy, the devilish fairy... It was an occasion for each of us to express a side of our femininity without compromises...”

PHOTOGRAPHY
Review by Roberto Mutti

La Repubblica - TuttoMilano, November, 2002

The young american author presents an exhibition rich of magic atmospheres: her models, made up with great skill, appear as gentle and mysterious beings, as elves or fairies, far from incorporeal and capable of transmitting an ambiguous fascination. The simplicity of the poses of the portraits and the refinement of the details recall the author’s profession of fashion photographer. To evoke fairy-like suggestions, the technique of image transfer from Polaroid to paper is used.

And also:

A Brera le pareti ricordano la Milano libertina del ’900
Libero, July 24, 2002

Laura Rickus
Milano Metropoli, May 2002

Between eroticism and poetry
L’Espresso Moda, April 2001