Richard Sobol: Island of Dreams

By Janelle Lynch

June 2012

Published by Loupe
Journal of the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University
Guest Editor: Janelle Lynch

Richard Sobol’s lyrically-painted photographs are vibrant, often fantastic depictions of the Dominican Republic and the people—and animals—that live there. They conjure Charles Burchfield’s watercolors, Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s novels as well as 19th-century hand-colored photographic prints. His collaborator is Ricardo Toribio, a native painter and poet.

Their venture began in 2004 when Sobol was traveling in the Dominican Republic and saw an exhibition of Toribio’s paintings in a small rural museum. Sobol was struck by how the work manifested his own perception of the place—spirited, warm, open, and free, despite its constraints. Sobol had a mutual friend arrange a dinner with Toribio and, following that, they met in the painter’s studio, where Sobol presented him with five large photographs and asked if he would paint on them. They have collaborated for eight years now during Sobol’s trips to the Caribbean. When they aren’t in the studio together, they are traveling. Toribio is a musician as well, and music is an important part of their journeys.

For more than three decades, Sobol has enjoyed a varied and successful career as a documentary photographer, photojournalist, children’s book author, and leader of international workshops for youth about wildlife conservation. From 1999-2004, he chronicled the planning and construction of a new Frank Gehry building at MIT and was privy to the extraordinary amount of collaboration involved in the project. He cites this experience as the impetus for his overture to Toribio to work collaboratively.

Sobol’s images in Island of Dreams are made with a digital camera and printed on ink jet paper. They authentically depict—and capture the spirit of—quotidian life, celebrating its tradition, color, beauty, and joyfulness. These are the inherent qualities of the culture that drew Sobol to it and that compel him to return—in addition to its love of music and dance. His subjects are people of different generations, animals of varying breeds—a boy and grandfather awaiting customers at their roadside drink stand, a pig in background; a donkey and motorcycle parked on the street, side by side; and a woman toting a tub of fried chicken, perhaps on her way to the market. The narrative potential is vast, but the essence of the images is the same—an embrace of what is most dear. And in this tropical landscape, that is the sun, sea, and all that lives between. Sobol eloquently captures the Dominicans’ appreciation for simplicity, because of his regard for the same.

Toribio uses oil paint and his gestures are simple, decorative, often repetitive swirls of color that animate the sky or water, much like Burchfield did in his landscapes. But the Dominican does it with a childlike whimsy whereas the American’s strokes were forceful and determined. Toribio’s markings add even more life to the lush tropical vegetation, a street vendor’s chestnut hair and the façade of a tienda. His introduction of fanciful detail elevates Sobol’s narrative beyond the confines of realism and draws on the magic of Caribbean culture.

Island of Dreams has been exhibited at the Museum at Altos De Chavon and at galleries in Santo Domingo and Sosua, all in the Dominican Republic.

Richard Sobol uses a digital camera and makes 24 x 36 inch photographs with an inkjet printer. His collaborator, Ricardo Toribio, adds oil paint to the surface.