Richard Brimer
Photography
Gordon Russell at home – 2020
Richard Brimer picked up his first camera as a teenager. Unenthused by school, at fifteen he apprenticed to a commercial photographer for whom his father worked as an accountant, where he focused on darkroom work and aerial photography. Drawn to people, Brimer worked for a portrait photographer before branching out on his own. He has had a successful freelance career spanning the past forty years.
Twelve years ago he lost his son, Joseph, to cancer, a tragedy marking a turning point in his private and professional life. He became more selective with his subjects, moving away from weddings and posed portraiture towards capturing the things that stirred his artistic heart. Wine, food, the Arts and people all inspire him, showing up in his work again and again. His book, Hawke’s Bay: Portrait of a Province, is dedicated to his son, immortalising the places and people he loved, raising $100K in funds for Cranford Hospice, who supported the family through Joseph’s illness.
Adrian Thornton, Hastings
Brimer has seventeen books of photography under his belt, and a robust exhibiting history at public and private galleries across the region, as well as the National Portrait Gallery in Wellington. He has an eye for the unusual, juxtaposing famous faces with those of ordinary individuals with a candour that belies his passion for people watching.
The wine industry is a subject he returns to again and again, from which he gains much of his commercial work as well as his private art photography. Brimer’s 2019 project, Harvest, documents the unsung heroes of the vintage, doing the hard yards on the ground of the vineyards. The book and accompanying exhibition at Hastings City Art Gallery peeks behind the curtain of harvest workers, many of them Recognised Seasonal Employees, who travel from overseas to carry out this skilled work, the essential backbone of the wine trade.
Jack Gittings Sculpture, Te Awanga
Black Estate Winery, North Canterbury
His next project, Artists in Residence, will bring us into the homes of artists and musicians around the country, offering intimate portraits of interesting people. He will combine touring the country’s vineyards to chronicle this year’s vintage with a foray into the lives and living spaces of his latest subjects.
Brimer’s dedication to his craft is evident in his work. He enjoys challenging himself, using unusual cameras such as a Swedish Hasselblad. He finds its unconventional set up harder to use, in turn making him work harder to snap the perfect shot. He’s experimenting with long exposure landscape photography, using a powerful LED light as a highlighter, a sort of photographic chiaroscuro.
Arahi, Musician
Dick Frizzell
Though he has moved with the times to a digital format, Brimer’s film training persists in the way he treats his pictures. He only uses basic digital editing, does not manipulate his images and tries to capture the perfect shot without having to crop. In doing so, he displays his true artist’s heart and mastery of his craft.
Connect with Richard