Photography as Tool and Muse in Raphaella Spence's Urban Hyperrealism

A silver gelatin print rests under glass at Spazio Arte Tolomeo in Milan, next to Raphaella Spence’s striking hyperrealist painting, Metropolitan Glow (2021). The painting measures one metre by two metres. Spence uses acrylics on canvas, creating a glossy surface that reflects the high-resolution quality of a photograph.

Born in London in 1978, Spence has long drawn inspiration from photographic references. She captures urban landscapes in cities like New York, Dubai, and Hong Kong, using these images as blueprints for her paintings, which she develops over several months with meticulous layering. At a 2022 event at the Bernarducci Gallery in New York, she stated, "Photography is my starting and ending point, a way to frame and refine vision."

Her process transcends reproduction. Spence amplifies photographic clarity. In her 2018 painting Illuminated Skyline, the light sources—windows, streetlamps, reflections—are intensified beyond any camera's capabilities. This results in hyperrealism: a polished, surreal cityscape that feels sharper than reality.

For Spence, photography serves as conceptual groundwork. Emerging in the late 1960s alongside Pop Art, hyperrealism responded to the looseness of abstract expressionism. Artists like Chuck Close and Richard Estes utilized photographic imagery but with varying techniques. Spence fits within this lineage, adding a post-digital perspective by adjusting lighting and angles digitally before translating the image to canvas.

“Photography today isn’t just a technical crutch—it’s a language,” asserts Dr. Maria Papadakis, an art historian at the University of Athens, who spoke at a 2023 symposium on hyperrealism at the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga. She emphasizes how artists like Spence reinterpret urban spaces through photographic logic. “The camera lens compresses depth and exaggerates contrast. Hyperrealists build on those distortions, presenting something recognizably photographic yet fundamentally altered.”

The interplay between hyperrealism and photography raises questions about authorship and authenticity in contemporary art. Spence acknowledges her reliance on photographic methods but insists her paintings are distinct. Unlike photographs, her canvases require prolonged engagement, both in their creation and viewing. Their overwhelming scale and minimal textures invite proximity.

This dialogue shapes how urban landscapes are conceptualized. Spence’s works frame cities as curated spectacles, stripping away imperfections like graffiti and litter, presenting a pristine architectural utopia. Critics such as Jonathan Wu, writing in Frieze in 2020, argue this sanitization risks aestheticized nostalgia, overlooking the complexities of real urban life. Yet Spence counters that her work is aspirational, stating, “Cities exist as much in our imagination as our experience.”

This imaginative aspect connects Spence’s practice to broader photographic traditions like typology and landscape photography. Consider the Bechers’ serial typologies or Andreas Gursky’s monumental photographs. Both emphasize patterns over narrative, a strategy evident in Spence’s works. However, unlike Gursky, Spence shifts the medium. She uses oil and acrylics, historically linked to permanence, to elevate her subjects.

Her approach has garnered commercial success and institutional attention. Spence is represented by Bernarducci Gallery, and her paintings have sold for over $100,000 (~€94,000). However, her work has struggled for traction in museum collections compared to her predecessors. Scholars like Papadakis suggest this reflects ongoing skepticism towards hyperrealism’s conceptual depth, often dismissed as “merely technical” by 20th-century critics. This perception persists despite artists like Spence engaging with media, perception, and digital culture.

Spence’s hyperrealism invites reflection on photography’s evolving role in contemporary art. In her case, the photograph operates as both a practical tool and an ideological framework. As digital imaging becomes ubiquitous, the boundaries between photographic and painterly practices blur. Spence’s paintings occupy a hybrid space where one medium informs the other, mirroring broader trends in a post-photographic era, as theorized by Geoffrey Batchen, who argues that photography is defined by conceptual fluidity rather than technique.

For viewers encountering Spence’s work, the interplay between photography and painting raises immediate questions. Are these painterly decisions or photographic details? The surface’s precision challenges the eye, recalling the grain of a printed image while remaining unmistakably painterly. As museums and galleries explore photography’s influence across artistic disciplines, works like Spence’s underscore its enduring significance—not only as documentation but as a site of imaginative transformation.