It’s hard to believe that Eric Renard made photos for 30 years before anyone besides his close friends and family saw his work. “As a teenager, I documented what I saw, my friends, my family, and my neighborhood, but I didn’t embrace photography as a creative artform until much later in life,” he explains. After remarrying, his new wife encouraged him to get his photos in front of more than just his inner circle. She introduced Renard to a gallery owner she knew, who liked what she saw and wound up exhibiting his images.
Since then, Los Angeles-based Renard’s work has been shown in galleries in London, Budapest, Greece, Mexico, Brazil, and across the United States. “Once you have one [gallery show] on your resume, it’s easier to get into others,” he says. His first solo show was in 2015 and his second was in 2019. After that second show, things snowballed. In total, his work has been featured in 50 group shows and five solo shows, and he’s even been curating his own shows, which is a great way to see how things work on the other side of the submissions process.
Renard’s focus is primarily high-contrast black-and-white cityscape images “that reflect an eerie sense of peace and tranquility,” he explains. “The landscape is the hero in these images,” he says. The people in the photos are intended to give the image a hint of life and to show scale. As he photographs, he waits for moments when an area is mostly clear of human traffic, with only one or a few figures traversing the scene. “Occasionally I get lucky,” he says, for example, when a man walked through a cityscape in Providence, Rhode Island, wearing a trench coat.
Black and white has always been Renard’s preference. “I spent my summers in Maine growing up, where there was a black-and-white darkroom, and then in college, where the classes were all [focusing on] black and white,” he says. “The anticipation of taking a roll of film into the darkroom to find out what had worked or not was like opening the candy bag on Halloween. Now, in the digital age, that anticipation is gone. But the excitement of seeing a well-captured image for the first time on a screen is still there.”
Renard’s most recent series reflects the themes he describes: high-contrast black-and-whites of urban settings. “Nobody Walks in L.A.,” a series he exhibited at the Sasse Museum of Art in Pomona, California, was inspired by the 1982 song “Walking in L.A.” by Missing Persons. “The world still thinks we don’t walk much, but we do,” he says, “and we also saunter, stroll, and strut our stuff on bikes and scooters wherever we go.” Additionally, the series highlights both the beloved and the not-so-beloved architecture of LA. It took Renard six months to get ready for the exhibition, which he says is common for solo shows.
His other recent series, “Slice of Light,” also centers around cityscapes but is “more focused on quality of light than locations,” he explains. The images were made in New York; Budapest; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Providence, Rhode Island; and Paris, and explore those moments “where the sun carves shadows like a laser, creating geometric shapes and drawing your eyes to the subject with pinpoint precision,” he explains. “The mood of these images comes from the barren cityscapes and the denizens who weave their way through the shadows.”
He makes his photographs in color in-camera and converts them in post-production. “When I shoot in black and white, the camera makes the choices for you. I like the control of converting myself,” he says. That also means that when he’s making photographs, he’s often imagining what they will look like in black and white. “Black and white is very pure and simple,” he says. “It’s light and shadow and shape, and there is no distraction of color. When I’m shooting in color, color is a significant part of the image, and the image is not the same in black and white.” So, creating black-and-white images requires noticing the light first, and then seeing the shadows and the shapes they create.
“Whenever I am asked about black-and-white photography, I think of a quote by Benicio del Toro, who said, ‘I don’t see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do,’” explains Renard. “He wasn’t talking about photography, but for me it applies. Sometimes when I am shooting, I envision my subject in black and white, and sometimes I don’t.”
Though Renard has found his way in the fine art photography world, he is the first to admit that it’s not an easy journey. “No matter how good you are, you are going to get rejected and it takes its toll,” he says. His first piece of advice for any beginning fine art photographer is simply to keep making photos. “The renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, ‘Your first 10,000 photos are your worst,’” says Renard. “Now that we are in the digital age, I think we can say, your second 10,000 are you second worst.” It’s just a matter of photographing continuously over the years and learning as much as you can along the way, he says.
Renard also stresses not to take rejection too personally. “You have picked a path with rejection at every turn,” he says. “Not every curator is going to like your work. They say keep trying, but I don’t think their taste changes. This might be controversial, but I say submit to curators who like what you do.” Over the years, submitting, curating, and networking in the fine art photography field, Renard has learned which curators like his style of work and which don’t. So, he pays attention to the names on a panel when he’s submitting for a group show and when pitching to galleries.
That said, it’s still a numbers game. “You need to submit continuously,” he says. “There are a lot of galleries. Some will like your work. Some will not. Some will be able to sell your work. Some will not.” It’s the reality of the journey. But if the result is finally exhibiting the talent you’ve been keeping from the public eye for 30 years, then certainly it’s worth the struggle.
Amanda Arnold is a senior editor.