In July 2013, at the Rencontres d’Arles, Catherine Balet began photographing her friend Ricardo Martinez Paz in homage to the photographers exhibited that year. The project did not stay celebratory for long. It became an inquiry into why certain photographs hold their ground, and what happens to that authority when images circulate online without context, consumed faster than they can be seen.
Ricardo is both muse and model, stepping into the roles of women and young boys to restage landmark photographs. Balet treats the originals with respect while asking what remains essential once the print is translated into another medium — the grain, the tone, the particular weight of a photographic object. The book also probes authorship itself: what it means to remake an image, and what image-processing technologies do to the idea of a photograph as a physical thing. The sequence opens with an 1839 self-portrait and moves through 176 years, assembling a subjective, imaginary museum rather than a survey.
Looking for the Masters in Ricardo’s Golden Shoes was shortlisted for the Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Award and selected as an Observer Photography Book of the Month. Both photographers are credited for the series. Balet studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and worked as a painter before turning to photography; Martinez Paz, born in Argentina, moved to Paris in 1977 and has worked as a photographic stylist and costume designer for feature films.
Dewi Lewis Publishing issued the book in 2016 as a clothbound hardback with gold-edged pages: 256 pages, 120 duotone and colour plates, 215 by 167 millimetres. For collectors drawn to work that thinks about photography’s own history and circulation, this is a considered example — a book whose making and design extend its central argument rather than merely housing it.
