Silent Witness
AVAILABLE SIZES:
- Large: 67 x 87 inches
- Standard: 48 x 61 inches
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.
Smoky The Mountain Lion
Montana, USA – 2018
Many consider that the definitive work on photography in the 20th century was perhaps written by the late Susan Sontag. It is a bold claim as there is a great deal of competition for that accolade, but her essay was translated into 32 different languages, so I guess it is up there.
I finally read it on a plane this summer and was fairly spellbound. To shorten one little paragraph: “Photography is as widely practised an amusement as sex or dancing – which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as art. It is mainly a social rite of family life and a way of certifying an experience.” Susan wrote before animal photography became mainstream – whether it be conducted in the back garden with the family dog or with zebra on the plains of the Serengeti. Either way the paragraph largely holds true.
This image of a mountain lion was taken under controlled conditions in the hills of Montana and therefore it is not certifying an experience – it is creating an experience. I have not taken this photograph – I have made this photograph.
It is not an authentic wildlife photograph and makes no claims to be so. I started with a preconception of what I wanted to achieve – an intimate portrait of an aggressive cougar and worked backwards from there. Ideally, I wanted a degree of facial detail that would normallyonly be attained in a studio with a tame mountain lion. The hills in North East Montana are a long way from any studio, but the mountain lion largely responded to his carer and that offered the opportunity.
Immersive photography or cinematography offers a better chance to emotionally engage the viewer. The greater the proximity between the subject and camera, the greater the chance of finding the soul of the subject – whether it be a cat or a human. The shorter the lens, the greater the chance of emotion and drama and the lower the light, the better the canvas on which to paint.
There were a number of factors at play – but the goal was simple – to convey the soul of Smokey – the mountain lion.
Available sizes:
- Large: 67 x 106 inches
- Standard: 48 x 73 inches
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.
Out Of Towner
Virginia City, Montana 2019
Virginia City, high in the hills of Montana, is as good as a ghost town. In the winter, only about 60 people live in the community. It is a State Heritage site and many of the buildings from the boom years of gold mining remain intact. In the 1860s, during the first three seasons, an estimated $30 million worth of gold was removed, by 1863 over 15,000 people lived there.
Over the last five years, I have photographed many times in the town and the neighbouring Nevada City, which is truly abandoned. It gets easier every time, as I know almost all of the remaining winter inhabitants and most are keen to collaborate in my storytelling. A strong partnership has developed between the locals and my team.
Winter is always my preferred time to work in Montana. It is visceral and visually energising to complement final frontier canvases with snow. Furthermore, the tourist traffic in the depth of winter is minimal, whereas these destinations are overrun with visitors in the summer. There is no point filming up here in July and August.
On our most recent visit the forecast was for snow and it gave me an idea. I have worked in the past with an old bear called Adam who lives in a sanctuary nearby and is something of a local celebrity with the mountain men. His owner occasionally exercises him in the area and I enquired if the high street of Virginia City would suffice for Adam’s morning workout.
A plan was hatched and we then had to wait for the snow to fall. We had done our homework as to the preferred frame of the street, it was then just a case of working with Adam to get the shot. It was cold, but he seemed to enjoy his trip to town.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE: Edition of 12
- Image: 56" x 90" (143 cm x 229 cm)
- Framed: 67" x 101" (171 cm x 257 cm)
STANDARD: Edition of 12
- Image: 37" x 60" (94 cm x 153 cm)
- Framed: 48" x 71" (122 cm x 181 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.
Let's Catch The Last Train Home
Montana, USA 2018
No one is remembered for playing it safe. On the surface, the idea of placing a couple of exceptional women in front of an abandoned train in a ghost town high up in the mountains of Montana, and styling them in a way that exposes their curves as well as their personalities, is a risky concept in 2018. There is every chance that this work could be seen as gratuitous objectification and not art. It will irk many but equally, their coats were positioned very carefully.
But I will go with it and when I saw the print for the first time in large scale, I knew there was something and others have reinforced this belief. It just works and the more I review the intricacy of the train’s facade, I do think that there is a little magic – the icicles, the expression of the mountain lion, the textural beauty of the wood. The girls both rock and that was not easy for them – it was 15 degrees below zero that morning.
But what I am trying to say? Nothing – nothing at all – I am just playing with visual double takes and remembering that the wild west was exactly that. Let’s just catch the last train home.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE: Edition of 12
- Image: 79" x 56" (201 cm x 143 cm)
- Framed: 90" x 67" (229 cm x 171 cm)
STANDARD: Edition of 12
- Image: 52" x 37" (132 cm x 94 cm)
- Framed: 63" x 48" (160 cm x 122 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 Wild West II
Montana, USA 2015
There are many times in this digital age, that a photographer on checking what he or she has on the LCD screen at the back of the camera body, succumbs to an adrenaline rush. Indeed there should be times like this, otherwise perhaps the photographer is not investing enough passion in their art. The joy of photography surely comes as much with the retrospection as it does with the preparation. The bit between is too short – a picture takes 1000/1 second – that is not enough time for accompanying emotion. When I saw this shot and its sharp focus on the back of my Nikon D4s, I gasped.
This staged image was great fun to put together. The gold rush saloon was very much as it was left – next to the brothel and in a fenced off “final frontier” street. We spent the afternoon opening up the bar, lighting candles and waiting for the light to go down so as to bring out those candles. The facade was as good as it could possibly be and then all that was needed was for the captive mountain lion to cooperate. These extraordinarily beautiful animals have enormous energy and when he was released from deep inside the saloon, he leapt magnificently out of the doorway. Luckily this was exactly what I was told to anticipate and I was ready. We nailed it as a team.
Before its general release , I showed this image to a number of people and the only negative comment I was given was that it was simply too good to be true. The mountain lion is positioned perfectly for the interior candles and the light snow flakes, as well as floating so majestically in the air. I can understand why some might then think that I computer engineered this image and simply pasted the lion into the doorway. That would ruin my career.
As I drove to the Montana airport with my cameras packed away, I knew what I had to do – I had to also release the images in the sequence either side of the shot. There is no way I could make this sequence up. Pixar maybe could , but there is no animation here – it is very real. I have this shot in my home – I think it is very special.
Available size options with and without framing are below;
- Large: 92 x 71 inches framed
- Standard: 52 x 66 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 Focused Wolf
Montana, USA 2015
Jim Brandenburg’s iconic shot of half a wolf’s head peering out from behind a tree, arguably marked the moment that wildlife photography became art. All those that ply Jim’s trade have much to thank him for – after all that single image – which can never be repeated – elevated the business of taking top tier wildlife imagery to an art form that was collectable.
I often ask myself to articulate what was so special about his photograph. I tend to home in on the simplicity of the image as well as its menace and the rule breaking incompleteness. It nails the character of the animal and the behavior that defines it.
Wolves may indeed have menace , but they are also unquestionably beautiful. I can’t compete with the Brandenburg shot and nor when I went to Montana, did I want to even try. There is no mileage on borrowing ideas, but I recognised the power of simplicity.
There are two aspects of my picture that make it quite special. Firstly, the limited depth of field brings every human eye to the wolves eyes – this was mathematically necessary as the low early morning light required opening up the lens aperture, but it was also the way to play the idea. A nice coincidence.
The other aspect to me is that the wolf is such a smart and focused animal and therefore I wanted to be sure that he was portrayed with crystal clear focus too. There is no room for lack of sharpness – that would not do this alpha animal justice.
It was very cold , but I guess that is conveyed.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
Available Sizes (Framed Size)
- Large: 71" x 95" (180 cm x 241 cm)
- Standard: 52" x 68" (132 cm x 173 cm)
Available Editions
- Large: Edition of 12
- Standard: Edition of 12
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.
Encroachment
Nevada City, Montana – 2017
I probably owe a great deal to the photographer Jim Brandenburg. I have never had the privilege of meeting him, but his iconic picture of half a wolf’s head jutting out from behind a tree is widely ascribed as a key moment in the history of wildlife photography. This was the day when transcending wildlife photography started to be regarded as art.
I am a fine art photographer, not a wildlife photographer, and so I sit somewhere in the middle of this debate. I don’t use long lenses unless I absolutely have to – polar bears and tigers being two cases in which they are helpful. Telephoto lenses compress the image and with it the chance of capturing something deeply evocative.
I do find many wildlife photographs very dull. It is not enough to see an animal and then photograph it – that is akin to google mapping and it is not art. Many wildlife photographers fall into the trap of believing that documentation is enough and it is not.
This image is deliberately reductive and there is no lofty ambition. But therein lies its strength. It is a paradox that white is such a strong colour and it is probably at its best in abstract imagery with no depth of focus. There was about an inch of focus here and it was well used.
Available Sizes (Framed Size)
- Large: 71” x 78” (180 cm x 198 cm)
- Standard: 52” x 57” (132 cm x 145 cm)
Available Editions
- Large: Edition of 12
- Standard: Edition of 12
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.
Something's Brewing
Virginia City, Montana 2019
This staged picture, in the virtual ghost town of Virginia City, has a compositional balance that I like; the wolf, the wolf’s shadow and the cowboys are all in the right place – which is fortunate given that the wolf was running towards me.
I have never used this old brewery building before in my storytelling because I worried that the facade was too high to fit in an image if there was also to be a cast immediately in front of it. There were two possible solutions – to move the story further away from the building, which would risk disassociation, or to get close to the building and try and capture the wolf with a true wide-angle lens, not easy at all and could risk ending with a lousy series of far lit loose shots. The whole building would be in for sure, but to work with a 28mm lens and a wolf is not to play the percentages.
We had no real choice but to go for the second option and roll the dice. We got lucky, but as someone once said “Luck is the residue of design”. A sharp shot on a 28 mm lens is pin pin sharp.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 56" x 67" (143 cm x 171 cm)
- Framed: 67" x 82" (171 cm x 209 cm)
STANDARD - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 37" x 47" (94 cm x 120 cm)
- Framed: 48" x 58" (122 cm x 148 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.
There Will Be Blood
Montana, USA – 2020
I have always wanted to name a photograph after this powerful Oscar winning movie – but the picture had to be strong and the content “bang on” appropriate.
The history of oil in so many ways mirrors the history of the world in the last 140 years and in America this holds very true, albeit the move west was fueled by so many other mineral resources as well as oil.
“Go West, young man, go West” is celebrated counsel from 1851 that was followed by millions and gave rise to final frontier towns, across swathes of Western America. The few communities that remain intact offer great potential as filming backdrop.
The key to this photograph was to remember that tight framing leads the eye and that the wolf had to be close to me – otherwise the image would fall flat. There was no room for dead space, but also there could be few errors in the positioning of the 15 people.
We shot this many times, but just one frame came off. It was not warm, and one was all we needed.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 56" x 84" (143 x 214 cm)
- Framed: 67" x 95" (171 cm x 242 cm)
STANDARD - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 37" x 56" (94 x 143 cm)
- Framed: 48" x 67" (122 cm x 171 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.
The Richest Hill in the World
Montana, USA 2018
I have wrestled with how I could convey the drama of a wolf encounter for some time. The problem, in my mind, was that I wanted the tension of proximity to be coupled with a palpable sense that the drama was yet to be played out – it could go either way. I wondered how Hitchcock would work this – it was not good enough to have distance between the two subjects as focus would then be an issue. The wolf and human needed to be equidistant from the camera to make them both sharp.
Then one day in Montana three years ago, high up in the mountains, I saw an abandoned farm truck not far from the main road. It had probably been there for over 60 years and was now just a rusty shell. It clearly offered potential to play out this concept but ideally I needed fresh snow on the bonnet and roof. The more virginal the snow cover the better.
This year I had my fresh snow and in Roxanna Redfoot, I had the perfect girl to cast in the role of the prey. The doors would not budge and she had to climb in through the broken window – but that was not a big deal for Roxanna even in tough temperatures. She is a rock star and I have no doubt that Hitchcock would have cast her at every opportunity.
It’s one of those images in which simply everything works.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 56" x 78" (143 x 198 cm)
- Framed: 67" x 89" (171 x 226 cm)
STANDARD - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 37" x 52" (94 x 132 cm)
- Framed: 48" x 63" (122 x 160 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.