Born on May, 1952 in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1972, he studied gravure, design, serigraphy and photography at "Taller 4 Rojo" in Bogotá, Colombia. He bought his first camera a Lubitel 6x6 and made his first snaps, which were printed later in issue #8 of European Photography Magazine. He hitch-hiked across Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. In 1972, he He moved to London and bought a Nikkormat. He studied English language and continued to work the techniques he learned at Bogotá. Later, he traveled to Zurich, where he shot his first series of photographs in black and white: empty landscapes with lot of snow
Trough 1974, he worked during the day in a vegetarian restaurant and studied at a part-time school called: "Sir John Cass School of Art", in London. There, under the guidance of Mick Williamson he began to build his first portfolio of photographs taken in Zurich. He worried about not having people in his pictures, so he started as a discipline, to look for a subject. During a demonstration of Teddy Boys at Hide Park, London, he began to document their community. Those images were the beginning of a portfolio, which he presented to entering at London College of Printing in 1976. Later that year, a workshop with Charles Harbutt, at The Photographer's Place in Derbyshire, marked the road in front of his eyes.
In 1977 he continued to complete his research on the Teddy Boys community and to photograph them obsessively all over Great Britain. In 1978, Ricardo Gómez Pérez makes his first trip to Barcelona, Spain to exhibit "Teddy Boys in London", where he met Joan Fontcuberta. Also, started the series "Encuentros", Flash Movement in black and white taken with a Leica CL which he bought from Paulo Nozolino at London College of Printing. The same year, he met Kim Nygaard and Ricardo Jiménez, and together they met Manuel Álvarez Bravo, at Photographer's Gallery.
[edit]Independent Work
As 1979, finished his studies at London College of Printing. During the final exhibit at that college, he met Brian Griffin, who invited him to began working together. They did a lot of work for British Music and rock groups, such as Iggy Pop, Lene Lovich, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ultravox, Peter Gabriel, and Ian Dury. Gómez Pérez was also doing freelance photography for some London magazines like New Society, Campaign, Management Today and others. He mets Andreas Müller-Pohle who asked him to be correspondent for European Photography Magazine. At that time he also met Richard Misrach at Photographer's Gallery in London. Until 1982, he worked as a freelance photographer in London, particularly for Management Today guided by art director Roland Schenk. He began to do portraits of businessmen and editorials for several London publications.
After ten years in London he moved to Paris in 1982. There he met Graciela Iturbide and Pedro Meyer; and they exhibited together at Studio 666 as part of The Latin American Photography at Paris. Additionally, his various solo exhibitions took him across Europe, throughout Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Spain.
He lived in Tarragona, Spain in 1984 thanks to David Balsells and Chantal Grande of Galería Forvm. There they exhibited and sold his photographs extensively and took care of him while in Spain. Furthermore he was the curator to "Semana International de la Fotografia", in Guadalajara, Spain. After he went to Lisbon, Portugal where he stayed with his best friend Paulo Nozolino. Finally he decided to go back to Caracas, Venezuela after 12 years of absence, to spend time with his mother.
1982 Return to Caracas
He obtained a grant from the Venezuelan Culture Ministry to continue his urban landscapes in Caracas. It took him one year to prepare a 30 photographs portfolio. All photographs were made with the format Pentax 6x7. In 1987 he began to work with Ricardo Jimenez as a freelance photographer team, which they called: RICAR-2. Together they had done portraits of many businessmen in Venezuelan Society at the time. They started to work for Revista Gerente, thus producing an extensive portfolio of portraits of the businesspersons who ran the country.
A limited edition portfolio was published in 1992: Memento in collaboration with Andreas Muller-Pohle, Joan Fontcuberta, John Webb, Philippe Scholz-Ritterman, Arno Jansen, Bernard Plossu, dedicated to the memory of a common friend: Derek Bennet. Later that year, Gómez Pérez was invited to Houston Fotofest'92, and again in 1994 (Houston Fotofest'94) where he traveled to Houston to attend the opening day of The Global Environment exhibit. He then received support from Polaroid to work in black and white/positive-negative material, he then began a new series of nudes and portraits of women.
For 1991, Ricardo Gómez Pérez has his first son, Mauricio, with his wife Gisela Viloria. Two years later in July 1993, Samuel and Nicolás, his twin sons, were born. In 1994, consequently to the birth of his children, Gómez Pérez began a new series of photographs, the outcoming portfolio was called Primeros pasos (First Steps) and is made up of out of focus, black and white pictures of his sons.
In 1994 the first issue of Extra Camara Magazine was published; he worked as the coordinator to this quarterly magazine between 1994-1998.
In 1997 Gómez Pérez curated the first exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas, Venezuela.
In 2001 he was invited by Pedro Meyer to exhibit his part of his First Steps portfolio at ZoneZero. At present, he lives with his family at Caracas, earns a living as a freelance photographer under the firm RICAR-2 with Ricardo Jiménez, and continues to work on his personal art work.
He is now working in a book-project with iPhone photos.
More reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Gómez_Pérez
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