Formento & Formento

"BJ is the light and Richeille is the pigment." Formento & Formento create romantic, elegant photographs, composed like film shots, that explore love, desire and the weight of memory. Their style lies in atmosphere, texture and a strong sense of place; they have often been compared to the world of David Lynch and the landscapes of Edward Hopper. Their images feature women, always with a touch of sensuality.

Each series is born of a journey or a question, and is built over several years.

Circumstance (2008-2010). In the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, they crossed the United States for five months in a 1969 Airstream trailer, photographing women met along the way who kept their faith in the American dream. The series became their first book, Circumstance: American Beauty Down on Bruised Knees.

Japan Diaries (since 2013). Modern Japan, between tradition and ultra-modernity, fantasy and reality: each image seems taken from a Japanese film noir. Glenn O'Brien saw in it "two eyes that create a third eye".

She is Cuba (2014). In the Havana of abandoned cinemas and casinos, the twilight of the Castro era and the wait for what is to come.

Strange Fascinations (2015). In Mérida, Mexico, sumptuous images of misfortune, accident and survival.

Hysteria (2015-2017). Post-war America, at the height of its power and on the verge of losing control; shot in Canada, Budapest, France and the United States.

A New Way of Seeing (2016). India, between Mumbai and Rajasthan.

Second Kind of Woman (2017). The transgender community of Bangkok, to move beyond unease towards the acceptance of all identities.

36 (2018-2019). A return to Japan, in the countryside beneath Mount Fuji, in homage to Hokusai.

Spies, Lies and Saboteurs. A tribute to the unsung heroines of the Second World War, ordinary women caught up in extraordinary times.

Rubber Soul. Born of lockdown: companionship, desire and attachment to the object, through dolls.

Portraits. A series of portraits of other artists.

Altered Landscape. Nature and the human footprint, beauty and pathos.

Nostalgia (ongoing). The feeling of nostalgia as a source of inspiration: longing for a past, a place, for what has been lost or never known.

Formento & Formento is a photography duo formed by a couple, BJ and Richeille Formento.

BJ Formento was born in 1964 in Honolulu and grew up in the Philippines. He studied photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in the 1980s, then moved to New York in 1999. There he assisted leading photographers, among them Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark and Annie Leibovitz, before working freelance from 2001.

Richeille Formento was born in 1975 in London. A graduate in graphic design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, she then worked in fashion as an art director and designer.

They met in 2005 in Miami, on a photo shoot, and married in New York three months later. Since then they have worked together and travelled the world for their series: the United States, Cuba, Mexico, India and Japan, which they consider their refuge.

Their work has been exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, among others, and presented at Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris Photo, Photo London, AIPAD and The Armory Show. It is held in the collections of the International Center of Photography in New York, the Moscow Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art (New Hampshire), the Boca Raton Museum of Art (Florida), the Bruce Museum (Connecticut), the Lewben collection, the Monnaie de Paris and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. They were named Hasselblad Masters in 2019.