Chicago
Chicago, Illinois 2019
This is is a big photograph of a big street in a big city. La Salle in Chicago, looking towards the Chicago Board of Trade building, is an iconic American urban view. Sam Mendes used it in the mobster classic – The Road to Perdition – and it has been glorified in many Batman iterations.
Chicago is urban beauty at its best and the presence of such a big building at the end of a street offers opportunities that Manhattan simply does not give. The eye is grabbed and then led deep into the vortex of Gotham.
I wanted a story that was cinematic and visceral and my founding principal was that we had to shoot at night. We could then wet the road to enhance reflections and deliver mood and use smoke machines to give the scene a gangster throwback feel. I spent a few hours in daylight on several intersections of La Salle pondering my lens selection and the right position. is aspect of the job was under my control and I had to get it right.
There was a riddle in that the Chicago Police Department was wonderful, but understandably would only close down the street after midnight, by which time the Board of Trade has switched off the flood lights on its iconic building. This was a problem and we had to move one of these variables in our favour. With some charm and a few dollars, the Board of Trade agreed to help us and the lights went back on until 4am.
I deliberately played with verticals in the composition because I felt that the retro Northern Trust sign was a useful vertical twin to the Board of Trade. There was a consistent play on height – so why not supplement this with a tall gangster and then most implausibly a tall wolf?
Great photographs can be looked at for a long time. I will leave others to decide if this is a great image, but I do know that it can be looked at for a very long time.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 56" x 79" (143 cm x 201 cm)
- Framed: 67" x 90" (171 cm x 229 cm)
STANDARD - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 37" x 52" (94 cm x 132 cm)
- Framed: 48" x 63" (122 cm x 160 cm)
We ship worldwide and use a multitude of providers to safely deliver your masterpiece. Domestic delivery and installation may also be available via Hilton Asmus Contemporary’s private art shuttle. Please inquire.
3:10 to Yuma
Railway tracks can be visually strong props for photographers and filmmakers as they lead the eye and also offer a palpable sense of travel and adventure. The problem is that train tracks are mostly live and therefore out of bounds for working artists.
Railroads played an integral role in the push West in the 19th century and the pioneering spirit that characterised their construction has long fascinated me. We located a disused track not far from Marfa in West Texas stretching all the way to Presidio on the Mexican border. It ran through private land and in one cattle ranch a modest station had been built to the side of the track for the Oscar winning 2007 movie “There will be blood”. We negotiated terms with the ranch owner and he gave us access to film on a location well known to Daniel Day Lewis.
My preconception was to push modern sensibilities to one side and to play to the stern masculine traditions of Westerns. I wanted a grittiness to the narrative and a simple story of final frontier “badness” at work. The more you complicate Westerns, the less effective they can become. I like to tell stories using archetypal imagery and bring my own vision of Western lore. I think it is always better to exaggerate and amplify – just as Tarantino did so exceptionally well in “Django Unchained”. Why dumb it down?
This was not a simple set up – getting an authentic wagon to this remote location required considerable resourcefulness. The composition and lighting work and the model – Josie Canseco – played her tragic role wonderfully well. Sometimes an idea just comes off and there is not much I would change in this frame.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE: Edition of 12 + 3 AP
- Image Size: 56” x 89” in (142.24 cm x 226.06 cm)
- Framed Image: 71” x 104” in (180.34 cm x 264.16 cm)
STANDARD: ALL EDITIONS ALLOCATED OR SOLD. Please contact us for more details
- Image Size: 37” x 59” in (93.98 cm x 149.86 cm)
- Framed Image: 52” x 74" in (132.08 cm x 187.96 cm)
We ship worldwide and use a multitude of providers to safely deliver your masterpiece. Domestic delivery and installation may also be available via Hilton Asmus Contemporary’s private art shuttle. Please inquire.
The Magnificent Seven
Marfa, Texas – 2020
The outdoor bar at The Lost Horse Saloon in Marfa, West Texas, is just how I hoped an outdoor bar, in traditional cowboy country, would look like – a mishmash of wood, corrugated iron, weaponry, stuffed animals and beer merchandise. My preference is that these bars should be cluttered and deeply individualistic – there are no formulas in West Texas other than in the Crystal Meth motorhomes. On our scouting, I was immediately drawn to the sign on the front of the bar which located the destination in the most authoritative of ways. Marfa may only have a modest population of 2,121, but almost everyone in Texas has heard of Marfa. It is the art outpost where “Burning Man” meets “No Country for Old Men”. Absolutely nothing about the place – which sits three hours from the nearest commercial airport – is in any way normal.
My creative prompts in using the facade of the bar were led by two dominating objectives – firstly, to make sure that everything and everyone in the picture earned their space and secondly, I wanted the lighting to remain fairly dim so that the character of the joint was retained. To flood the narrative with light would give me greater depth of focus, but it could turn the bar into a sitcom studio. We needed to hold back. The magnificent seven all earned their place and it was a thrill to work with the lovely Nathalie Emmanuel – the English actress that many will know from playing Missandei in Game of Thrones. She was much easier to instruct than the horse, but he is so used to being in that bar that we got there in the end. The white nose of the horse was a bonus.
Available size options with and without framing are below;
- Large: 67 x 93 inches framed
- Standard: 48 x 65 inches framed
We ship worldwide and use a multitude of providers to safely deliver your artwork. Domestic delivery and installation may also be available via Hilton Contemporary’s private art shuttle. Please inquire.
The Lost Horse Saloon
Marfa, Texas – 2020
A great facade for an authentic Texas working bar with the two neon lights outside. But this frame was a technical challenge because these two lights offered insufficient ambient light to give any detail outside – even before contemplating capturing a rearing horse.
This meant using some LED lighting but we had to be careful not to kill the mood. The only card I had in my hand was that I could open up the lens and sacrifice depth of field, as all the detail I wanted would be within a narrow range from my camera. This gave me a chance.
The girls did a great job, as did the cowboy and the horse. The Heath Ledger type cowboy in the bar was a good addition and then it was just down to luck with the horse on a longish shutter speed. A year ago, we did a similar outdoor shot in Big Timber, Montana. Coyote Ugly – as we called it – was well received. The Lost Horse Saloon was much more of a challenge on so many levels. The two certainly complement each other very well. Maybe this is the start of something.
Available Sizes
LARGE: Edition of 12 + 3 AP
- Image Size: 56” x 71” in (142.24 cm x 180.34 cm)
- Framed Image: 71" x 86" in (180.34 cm x 218.44 cm)
STANDARD: Edition of 12 + 3 AP
- Image Size: 37" x 47" in (93.98 cm x 116.84 cm)
- Framed Image: 52” x 62” in (132.08 cm x 157.48 cm)
We ship worldwide and use a multitude of providers to safely deliver your artwork. Domestic delivery and installation may also be available via Hilton Contemporary’s private art shuttle. Please inquire.