THE HEART OF THE STORY. EMBRACE IT, BE MOVED BY IT.

Richard Sheaves is a photographer who travels the journey alongside his subjects. Slowly and imperceptibly, Richard’s uniqueness lies in his empathy and ability to-develop trust. He allows the characters to lead their own journey, to reveal raw and authentic emotions. As a documentary storyteller his tenacity, patience and sensitive approach enables his images to explode into a rich tableau of multi-layered emotions. Richard’s world takes him to places where others may be hesitant to venture. He will go into that little non-descriptive hut and emerge with a powerful story that goes beyond the obvious. Sensual and explorative, Richard’s raison d’être is to peel the layers and to encapsulate the moment that defines the subject.

Bio: Using photography to capture the essence of delicate moments runs in Richard’s veins. His desire to know what lies at the heart of his subjects is his motivating force. His journey from a world of medicine to a life with artists has been complimentary and intertwining. As he says ‘medicine is an art’.  Richard has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Richard grew up in a small countryside farming community in Devon, England. He studied Medicine at the University of Oxford and completed his Masters in Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. During this time he was also a moonlighting photographer, developing his own pictures using his home built darkroom. With an Olympus OM1 film camera, Richard experimented in the early days with surreal imagery. He also created a system of painting light sensitive material onto silk-screens so that he could develop images from a slide projector. When he left Oxford he spent a year working in Brazil. He carried his enlarger with him in his rucksack and finished the trip developing pictures as he criss-crossed the countries of South America. 

Whether sharing freshly caught fish with local fishermen on the coastline of Fortaleza in North East Brazil or observing the street life from cafes in Berlin or Paris, Richard’s instinctive personality is to reach out. His subtle humour and playfulness is clearly visible in his artistic work, adding both sensitivity and light relief to his narratives. Telling stories through his photography is Richard’s way to satisfy his curiosity. The search to find some of our most colourful and distinctive individuals has taken him to the cardamom plantations of Kerala, the tobacco fields of Cuba, and to the San Blas islands of Panama. In every destination there will be somebody remarkable and his job is to find that person.

Richard’s free time is spent exploring, tasting and breathing in the senses. His love and empathy for people will continue to take him around the world. His stories are told through a mix of photographs, video and music. He illustrated his home area of Portobello Road in London using a series of collages of the local streets, images of the sky and low viewpoint portraits of passers by. His Middle Eastern portrait series was born out of the serenity of the Jordanian deserts harnessed to the noise of the souks of Morocco. Furthermore, he has completed a collection of musical narratives by infusing sequences of photographs to musical scores.

Richard lives between London and Lisbon where he indulges in his passion for live Fado music and a glass or two of Portuguese wine.