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"Life is long but also short. This is a phrase that has been constantly said to me since I was a child. Recently, on May 21st, I turned twenty-seven years old. Overwhelmed by my ability to comprehend time, I felt amazed by the density of life, scared and excited by the amount of living we do as individuals. Each person living many lives, experiencing drastically different paths while we are all simultaneously united by our existence on Earth. In I Want Your Love by Richard Renaldi we explore Renaldi’s life path until the present day.
Growing up gay to divorced parents in suburban Chicago, Richard kept his sexuality secret for most of his upbringing. Doing what he could to get away from his life and explore a foreign culture that he desired despite his distance from it. Renaldi’s early exploration of his identity as a gay man came in the form of photography — which is subtly revealed in this monograph. Acting as a diary assembled from vernacular images, written memories, and personal photographs, I Want Your Love is a colorful and intimate journey that reveals itself through its humanity.
As viewers, we experience Renaldi’s trials with AIDS, heartbreak, family obstacles, partying, bliss, sex, and the mischief of youth. We see Richard at his highs and his lows. We learn about the collapse of his dreams, his struggles with certain lovers, we re-live the moment he came out to his mother, but most of all we experience his fast-paced, colorful, high drama lifestyle. We discover Seth, Eric, and Terry. We feel the brutality and mystery of the AIDS epidemic. We watch as Richard’s parents struggle, accept, and support their son.
Renaldi is known for his ability to create intimate portraits; his past works are heralded for how vulnerable and willing his subjects feel. However, the way Renaldi looks inward in this book does something that his other publications don’t do for me. In I Want Your Love we find Richard exposed, free, and not holding back. This monograph is a diary that leaves no stone left unturned. We find the human inside the hero, we find the little boy inside the man, and Renaldi seems to show us that life is long but also short. He reveals not only the intricacies of identity but reveals one of the most valuable truths we can know as humans, this life is special regardless." — Christian Michael Filardo
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Christian Michael Filardo is a Filipino American photographer, curator, and composer living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This year they released their second book The Voyeur’s Gambit through Lime Lodge. Currently, they help run the gallery and performance space Etiquette and write critically for photo-eye and Phroom. Filardo is the current shipping manager at photo-eye Bookstore.