Ronald Martinez

Ronald Martinez’s artistic nude photographs aim to bring out the beauty of bodies caressed by chiaroscuro light. His images, inspired by Renaissance paintings, blur the boundary between photography and painting.

Ronald Martinez: reinventing painting through photography

The French contemporary photographer‘s main inspiration is undoubtedly Italian, Dutch and Spanish painting from the Renaissance and Baroque periods: Caravaggio in particular, for his chiaroscuro, which deeply moved the photographer; Vermeer, for the soft pinkish hues of his skin tones, but also the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rubens, Diego Velázquez and José de Ribera. The photographer engages with these masters by reinterpreting their paintings through photography, establishing an astonishing dialogue between the past and the present.

“It’s like a sort of mission to be able to reinterpret these works. When I photograph, I feel the presence of the great masters beside me, as if they are waiting for the result. It’s a kind of tension, like a knot in my stomach: I really have to photograph in order to be able to do things with my own life.” Ronald Martinez

In his work, it is certainly possible to recognise sacred, symbolic and profane themes from the history of art, such as the Passion of Christ, the Madonnas and the Vanities. However, the artist reinterprets them in his own way: in his creative process, he mixes images from dreams, intuitive ideas about the model’s poses, and objects from everyday life.

From this emerge delicate and intimate photographic compositions, combining aesthetic power and sensory richness. The bodies are drawn by the fine nuances of chiaroscuro and the profound play of light, in a constant quest to reveal their beauty: “I try to really show the depth, the sensitivity, the divine beauty through these bodies, which I find truly magnificent. Beauty is something extraordinary.” Ronald Martinez

Capturing the moment with chiaroscuro

Ronald Martinez’s technique is, as he himself describes it, “simple but difficult“. He photographs in total darkness, with a single source of light illuminating the model against the black background. He always works with classical music playing in the background, so as to immerse himself in an atmosphere conducive to creation. Chopin and Debussy are among his favourite composers.

The light caresses the bodies in the half-light, enhancing their skin tones and sculpting their shapes in a marked, seductive contrast. The difficulty of this technique lies in the search for a perfect alchemy between the photographer, the model and the light: the aim is to “capture the present moment in which everything coincides to create an extraordinary work“. The photograph has to be perfect when it’s taken, because there’s no post-production.

The most important part of Ronald Martinez’s creative process is finding the right models: they have to match the Renaissance canons of beauty. Before each session, the artist looks at the painting books with them for inspiration and to exchange ideas. Then, a special alchemy has to be created during the shooting. The artist explains his relationship with his model as follows: “I feel that the interaction I have with my models is a mixture of the energy and the story that binds us through a work, through a painting“.

From beginnings in photography to an international career

Ronald Martinez (Annecy, 1978) lives and works in Versailles, France. After training in photography at Studio M in Montpellier, he gained experience in a variety of fields: as a photojournalist with the regional daily Midi Libre and as an actor and set photographer in theatre and film. In 2010, he shot the poster for Mathieu Demy’s film Americano. One day, he took a few unpretentious photographs in his Paris flat, which was extremely dark at the time; these marked the beginning of the artistic research that characterises all his work.

Ronald Martinez then rented a vaulted cellar under the Champs-Élysées, where he set up the studio in which he took most of his Nus Divins (Divine Nudes) photographs. Italian gallery owner Maurizio Nobile, who specialises in painting, discovered his work and in 2012 invited him to continue his research into chiaroscuro as part of an artistic residency in Bologna. In the churches and museums of Italy, the artist immersed himself in the paintings of the great masters of the Renaissance. For the exhibition of his first series, Hommage à la peinture italienne (Homage to Italian Painting), Ronald Martinez entrusted the development of his prints to Maître Choi, a large-format specialist and printer for Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Bettina Rheims and Sophie Calle.

Since 2013, Ronald Martinez has been exhibiting his work in France and Europe in galleries and at major fairs such as Arte Fiera (Bologna) and MIA (Milan Image Art Fair, Milan). In 2013, the catalogue for the Nus Divins exhibition joined the libraries of MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York and MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) in Paris. In 2019, one of his contemporay photographs was shown at the Villa Noailles contemporary art centre in Hyères, as part of the exhibition Love My May. The photographer’s work can be found in many international private collections.