Born in
North London to graphic designer
Alan Aldridge, Miles grew up accustomed to celebrity –
John Lennon was a family friend, as well as
Eric Clapton and
Elton John.[2] When he was a child, he posed with his father for
Lord Snowdon. At the age of 12, Alan Aldridge moved to Los Angeles where he formed a new family. Miles stayed in London with his mother Rita, a housewife, and his brother Marc and sister
Saffron. His two half-sisters
Lily and
Ruby are models. He studied
illustration at the
Central St Martins to follow his father's steps and afterwards briefly directed pop videos (for bands including
The Verve,
The Charlatans and
Catherine Wheel).
He moved into photography by chance: he sent some photos of an aspiring model girlfriend to an agency and fell into fashion when British Vogue called him as well as her. By then he had hung out on shoots with his sister and travelled to New York in the mid-nineties, where he started working almost immediately.[3]
Many private and public art galleries have hosted Aldridge's photographs around the world: in 2007 the
Miami Beach Art Photo Expo; in 2006 and in 2008 the Galerie Alex Daniels in
Amsterdam with solo shows The Cabinet and Acid Candy;[6] in 2010 the Contributed Studio for the Arts in
Berlin and the Gallery Hotel Art in
Florence.
In 2009 Steven Kasher Gallery displayed Pictures for Photographs, his first solo show in the United States. The exhibition and a
monographic volume were the peak of a project combining drawings and photographs, born from a collaboration with
Karl Lagerfeld and
Gerhard Steidl. In New York his work was showcased also at the
International Center of Photography with am exhibition entitled Weird Beauty.[5]
In the Summer of 2013,
Somerset House in London hosted a major retrospective exhibition of the photographer entitled I Only Want You to Love Me, which brings together large scale photographic prints of works produced during his career.[7]
2002: Archeology of Elegance, Haus der Photographie / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany
2007: Art Photo Expo, Art Basel, Miami Beach, United States
2008: Traum Frauen – 50 Starfotografen zeigen ihre Vision von Schönheit, Haus der Photographie / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany
2008: Art Photo Expo, Art Basel, Miami Beach, United States
2009: Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now – Year of Fashion, ICP International Center of Photography, New York, United States
2010: A Positive View, Somerset House, London, Great Britain
2011: Beauty Culture, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, United States
2011: Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography, organised by the V&A, at Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton, Great Britain
2011: Ein Bild von einem Auto, Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen, Germany
2012: Best of Fashion Photography, Contributed Studio for the Arts, Berlin, Germany
2013: Dream Woman + Dream Men, Central Exhibition Hall 'Manage', Saint-Petersburg, Russia
2013: New Fashion Photography, Contributed Studio for the Arts, Berlin, Germany
2014: The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, United States
2014: The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, Barbican Art Gallery, London, Great Britain
2014: Aipad New York, Aipad, New York, United States
2015: Sleepless - The Bed in History and Contemporary Art, 21er Haus of the Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
2015: Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Conde Nast, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, United States
2015: Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Conde Nast, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia
2017: The Critic as Artist, Reading Museum, Reading, Great Britain
Monographs
His monographs include Acid Candy (published by Reflex New Art Gallery,
Amsterdam, with an introduction by
Glenn O'Brien); The Cabinet (with an introduction by
Marilyn Manson), Pictures for Photographs (published by
Steidl) and Other Pictures (2012,
Steidl).[10]
In 2013, Brancolini Grimaldi (London based
Art Gallery in
Somerset House) announced a
Rizzoli special edition of Aldridge's new book I Only Want You to Love Me, limited to 200 signed and numbered copies.[11] Aldridge's latest project is a book made in collaboration with stylist
Nicola Formichetti and entitled Zero Zero Vol. 02, that will be presented during the
New York Fashion Week.[12]
Miles sees a color coordinated, graphically pure, hard-edged reality. —
David Lynch[14]
Miles Aldridge constructs dreams. That is his artistic and commercial practice. He understands the essential ingredients of the dream and he uses impeccable instinct in crafting something like "stills" from the fractured narratives that we normally experience nocturnally and unconsciously...he creates these dreams while illustrating today's fashions for their potential buyers. A dream can make you conquer a new land or buy a new hat or a painting or a philosophy. Aldridge knows that dreams are an exquisite tapestry of right and wrong, a chain of happenings in which what is "right," that is what is logical or normal, conflicts with what is wrong, what defies our waking order of things, our expectations and sensibility. Dreams disrupt what is perceived as reality. Dreams happen to some people. And some people make them happen. —
Glenn O'Brien, from Introduction to Acid Candy[15]
Miles Aldridge is a director at heart. His images are anything but portraits of a subject. They are his actors, his actresses...Each photograph has a very sacred pathology to every angle and obsession to detail. There is genius in the very deliberate blankness on the face of the models than enables a transference of identity. He always draws you into an arrested fetish that seems as forbidden as a little girl's diary. —
Marilyn Manson, from Introduction to The Cabinet[16]
In his acid-coloured images of lascivious lips, impossibly glossed models and hallucinogenic still lives, the photographer Miles Aldridge is plainly heir to some of the twentieth century's enduring pop culture visionaries. David Lynch's surreal stylisation and interest in moths, the carefully staged elegance of Richard Avedon and the psychedelic graphic design of Alan Aldridge are all in there. — Skye Sherwin, Art Review April 2009[17]
Bibliography
2006: The Cabinet, Reflex Gallery, Amsterdam
2008: Acid Candy, Reflex Editions, Amsterdam
2009: Pictures for Photographs, Steidl, Germany
2010: Kristen: As seen by Miles Aldridge and Chantal Joffe, Reflex Editions, Amsterdam
2013: Miles Aldridge: Other Pictures, Steidl, Germany
2013: Miles Aldridge: I Only Want You To Love Me, Rizzoli International Publications
2014: Miles Aldridge's Carousel, Sims Reed Gallery, London
2014: One Black & White and Nineteen Colour Photographs, Reflex, Amsterdam
2014: Miles of Mac, Rizzoli, New York
2016: Please return Polaroid, Steidl, Germany
2016: (after Cattelan), Colour Pictures, London
Selected featured publications
2015: Sleeples - The Bed in History and Contemporary Art, 21er Haus Belvedere, Vienna
2016: Bling Bling Baby!, Hate Cantz Verlag GmbH, Germany