The Girl On The Train
Montana, USA
This old railway carriage, was built in Mon – tana in 1902 and operated until 1968. It now lies abandoned in the ghost town of Nevada City and serves as a reminder of the busier days in the mountains. At today’s value, when mining came to an end in 1922, some $2.5bn of gold had been extracted from the region. The state of Montana played an integral part in Gold Rush history.
I first visited the train in 2015 and immedi – ately saw its potential for a staged shot. Half the window areas are open to the elements and in the winter the snow often overwhelms the decaying interior. In the following years we took a few pictures but, in many ways, these were a dress rehearsal for November 2020. We knew our light and our angles.
Taking the female icon Cara Delevingne to a unique site like this, so far from anywhere vaguely on the map, was an opportunity not to be wasted. This is not a job for the precious, the carriage is fragile and getting on board was not easy. But Cara, as I know from working with her previously, is not precious, she is game for anything that is creative and authentic.
The camera loves her and the styling – in an old buffalo skin coat – deliberately plays to a timeless story. She pings out of the train. Sometimes an artist creates something that can’t be copied and I think this is one such work. We would like to thank the Nevada City Outdoor Historic Museum for collaborating on this project.
Half of all profits of photograph sales from this assignment with Cara will go to The Cara Delevingne Foundation. David’s first collaboration with Cara in 2018 for TAG Heuer went on to raise £240,000 for The Cara Delevingne Foundation.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 56” x 86”
- Framed: 71” x 101”
STANDARD - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 37” x 57”
- Framed: 52” x 72”
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 Getaway
Montana, USA
This photograph, taken high in the mountains of Montana, offers strong clues as to why Cara Delevingne is a global superstar. She has the eyes and the face to steal most scenes and the intelligence to play a prescribed role. There is nothing I would change in her look in this vignette. It is a perfect combination of purpose and rather unhinged menace. She can do this as easily as some people flick a switch.
Chief John Spotted Tail of the Lakota tribe was an excellent foil for Cara and they work well together. He is revered locally and it was an honour to have him on set. He brings a further edge to an image encapsulating my read on the old Wild West: a place of guns; trouble in hard drinking saloons; occasional bad weather and maverick characters. No wonder Westerns have a film genre to them selves – it is too rich a seam in the material to have to share a category with anything else. To go “West” was perhaps the greatest adventure story the world has ever known.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 56” x 96”
- Framed: 71” x 111”
STANDARD - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 37” x 64”
- Framed: 52” x 79”
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.
My Baby Takes The Morning Train
Montana, USA
In 1863, Bill Fairweather and his party discovered gold in southwestern Montana. They were on their way to Yellowstone County from Bannack but were waylaid by a band of Crows. Whilst hiding from the Indians in a gulch they found gold. They named the gulch after the alder trees lining the gulch. Alder
was one of the great gold producers of all time. The site of the largest placer gold strike in world history. It produced $10,000,000.00 during the first year.
Given this background, I thought it would be appropriate to bring a modern-day Indian Chief into the abandoned mining train in Nevada City.
Alessandra Ambrosio is not just a famed super-model, she is a wave of fun and good energy. Working with her and her team is an absolute joy. It must have seemed a long way from her home country of Brazil in that carriage, but she is so effective in whatever role I outline for her.
We found a Montana paper from the height of the gold rush and thought it would lend to the story if Chief John Spotted Tail was reading it. This was a commuter train like no other.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 56” x 71”
- Framed: 71” x 86”
STANDARD - Edition Size: 12
- Image: 37” x 47”
- Framed: 52” x 62”
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.
Tennessee Whiskey
Montana, USA 2020
“Whiskey and the cold go together for me, as does travelling around Montana and playing country music. This photograph’s title gives us the opportunity to celebrate all of the above. The ice bar was a specialist effort and over the two days I think the team did a grand job. There is a palpable sense of cold in this most remote bar two hours north east of Billings. The day we shot it was snowing heavily outside which I think made everyone’s job easier. It was not as if we were in a studio in Burbank with 90-degree temperatures outside.It was technically a challenging image as I needed the Tamaskan dog, the saloon girl, Josie Canseco, and the mountain man to be sharp or near sharp and this required a very slow shutter speed. This is a bar that should exist somewhere. If anyone finds it please make sure to let us know.” – David Yarrow
AVAILABLE SIZES:
- Standard Framed size: 48 x 66 inches
- Large Framed size: 67 x 94 inches
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.
Unforgiven
Montana, USA
When Cindy Crawford made her iconic Pepsi advert in 1992 for the Superbowl and then repeated it again in 2018, there were a few other constants as well as the model herself – most notably Peter Savic, one of the most celebrated hair stylists in the world. His client roster reads like the ultimate A list in Hollywood. Looking at his CV it would be quicker to mention who he hasn’t worked with.
I had never had the fortune to work with Peter before but my brief time with him in Eastern Montana gave an insight into his genius. I gave him a rather clumsy articulation of the narrative I was looking for in this outdoor shot in freezing temperatures near Ingomar, a tiny hamlet with a population of just 15. We were about as far removed from controlled studio conditions in Hollywood as you could conceive. I think I simply said that Cindy would be carrying a shotgun and with it a look of intent. Twenty minutes later Cindy bounced out of the car with an extravagant Raquel Welch 1960s big hair look that was spot on for what I had in mind.
After that my job was easy – to shoot as quickly as possible so that our lead would not get too cold. The trick is simply to have no doubt in one’s mind of the composition and believe firmly in the narrative embodied in the preconception. It’s a bit like a golf shot (not that I would know), you make up your mind and go for it. My storyline was that Cindy and her troop were the deliverers of frontier justice – whatever way that may come. I guess there is a slight nod to Tarantino in the vignette.
It worked and this was certainly a team effort.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 50” x 101”
- Framed: 65” x 116”
STANDARD - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 32” x 65”
- Framed: 47” x 80”
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.
Enough Is Enough
Montana, USA
Sometimes a simple narrative can work better than one with many different layers. There is nothing I would change in this photograph. It just works so well. Cindy, who was styled with reference to Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago, looks sensational and the symmetry of the abandoned decaying building is almost too good to be true. Meanwhile, the snowfall is just right; heavy enough to be impactful, without it being a full on blizzard which would have impaired the aesthetic detail. There was enough light that cold morning in North East Montana to allow for a generous depth of field.
The cowboy, who looks like he is losing his glamorous wife for good, hails from Indiana and I have used him as an extra in the past. He wears his weathered Jeff Bridges look with comfort and his positioning against the window was well conceived. Storming out of the house is a marital storyline that many will be more familiar with than would readily care to admit. However, this rift, like the house, looks irreparable.
I love this image, as indeed does Cindy. I can see it adorning the walls of many a mountain lodge in the years to come. What a stroke of luck to dis – cover that building and we will keep its location secret. Even if someone finds it, I think they may well struggle to assemble the other component parts.
As with the first project in 2019, half of all profits of photograph sales from this assignment with Cindy will go to the University of Wiscon – sin’s Paediatric Cancer Care Unit in Madison. The first series raised over $600,000 and only a very few prints are now available at high prices.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 56” x 83”
- Framed: 71” x 98”
STANDARD - Edition Size: 20
- Image: 37” x 55”
- Framed: 52” x 70”
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.
Empire of the Summer Moon
New York, USA 2020
“For those looking for a good book to read in these times when good books have assumed a bigger role in our daily lives, I strongly recommend Empire of the Summer Moon, The New York Times’ bestseller about the war between the Comanche and the white settlers for control of the American West. The book was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize – so I am not saying anything groundbreaking in my recommendation.
The Comanche was the most powerful tribe in American History. They adapted to the horse earlier and more completely than any other plains’ tribe and they were without doubt the prototype horse tribe in North America. The white man’s 40-year war with the Comanche in the mid 19th century was the tribe’s final chapter in its 250-year crusade to fight off settlers. But their legacy lives on and the lethal inland empire dominated by the tribe is an integral part of American history.
My idea for this part of the series was to work with a Comanche descendant from their homeland in Texas and New Mexico and place him or her against today’s Manhattan Skyline. A horse was not going to work in this storyline, as we thought the Hudson River would offer the best platform on which to play a layered narrative.
With the help of a friend in Colorado, we found the right Comanche for the job in Santa Fe and he was excited to collaborate on the project. He helped source the canoe and brought his warrior clothes. Again, we would stress that their pride in their heritage manifests itself in fully embracing projects that give their tribe exposure. We were looking to create art as opposed to saying anything profound. By photographing an ancestor of America’s most powerful tribe in front of modern America’s most powerful city – the lost world meeting the new world – we are simply celebrating the breadth of American history.
Joaquin Gonzalez did the Comanche proud. He managed the canoe on those waters magnificently and he looked every inch the warrior that we asked him to be.”- David Yarrow
EMPIRE showcases the span of American history, particularly through its evolution. New York City is a product of capability, development, and cultural diversity over a span of several decades, and the juxtaposition of this city against a descendant of a great and powerful Native American tribe demonstrates that there is more than one manifestation of American “greatness”. Humanity suggests that there is no overarching way to measure human beings and our accomplishments, and that in and of itself is greatness at work.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
Large: Edition of 12 + 3 AP
- Image Size: 56” x 87” in (142.24 cm x 220.98 cm)
- Framed Image: 71” x 102” in (180.34 cm x 259.08 cm)
Standard: Edition of 12 + 3 AP
- Image Size: 37” x 58” in (93.98 cm x 147.32 cm)
- Framed Image: 52” x 73” in (132.08 cm x 185.42 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.
Chief
Wyoming, USA 2020
“There is wide recognition now that Christopher Columbus did not discover America in 1492 and the events in Minneapolis have accelerated the debate on the possibility of institutionalised racism in the teaching of American history. This is not a discussion we want to fully engage in – as we are ill equipped to add value, but I do want to celebrate some of the tribal elders I have had the fortune to encounter in the last month. Their pride, manners, grace and humility have been humbling. We have made new friends in the North.
For this project we worked with Chief John Spotted Tail, the great-great-grandson of the fabled Lakota chief Spotted Tail. We spent two days with him in Northern Wyoming and he was so excited to wear the headpiece that only the most senior Native American chiefs like him can wear. His attire was emphatically his decision not ours. Their heritage is integral to their souls.” -David Yarrow
David Yarrow is dedicated to capturing nature in its most raw and fragile forms, bending time by immersing the viewer directly into the moment that he has photographed. With CHIEF, there is a bit of an exception, as the omnipotence and majesty of the landscape are equally mirrored in both Chief John Spotted Tail and his horse. CHIEF lends itself to Humanity through its integration of humanity and nature, recollecting the symbiotic relationship that we have with our planet. Without one’s prosperity, the other simply cannot exist.
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE: Edition of 12
- Image Size: 56” x 81” in (142.24 cm x 205.74 cm)
- Framed Image: 71” x 96” in (180.34 cm x 243.84 cm)
STANDARD: Edition of 12
- Image Size: 37” x 54” in (93.98 cm x 137.16 cm)
- Framed Image: 52” x 69” in (132.08 cm x 175.26 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 Proud Night Watchman
The Dinka means “people’ in their own language and there are about 5 million of them in South Sudan. They have many salient characteristics – a deep sense of community, a obsession with their cattle and an average height 3 inches higher than the average for the human race. The men couple this height with great muscularity and physical strength. Each Dinka faction – and there are many- will fight and kill to protect their community and their cattle from outsiders – and they do this with guns not primitive weaponry.
In this vast cattle camp near Yirol, I stayed late one afternoon to watch the behaviour of the adult herdsmen and this particular man showed all the aforementioned characteristics – he was at least 6 foot 5 inches of muscle, he carried a gun and he watched attentively over his community below. The picture tells an accurate story of daily life, not a contrived one.
I understand why depiction of guns anywhere in an image can hint at news reportage or photojournalism rather than art, but on this occasion, I believe the gun offers quiet dignity and completes the photograph. It is because of that gun that there is serenity below, not in spite of it. Life in a cattle camp in a war torn country is made safer by the gun , not more dangerous.
I believe that this image conveys the deep pride of the Dinka. The proud nightwatchman has pride in his role and his responsibilities – and this lends an almost inconceivable romanticism to the work.
We got on well because he liked the pictures I had of British cows – which he found hilarious.. As always, its all about homework
AVAILABLE SIZES:
LARGE
- 71" x 106” (180 cm x 269 cm)
STANDARD
- 52" x 85” (132 cm x 215 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.
Maradona
We recently showed this well known photograph at an event in Los Angeles and it received considerable interest and therefore we have decided to release the print as a one sized limited edition. The timing is appropriate too, as the documentary film – Diego Maradona – directed by Asif Kapadia has recently been released to international acclaim.
The photograph was taken on film way back in 1986, so the quality is not quite what can be achieved today. Nevertheless, it captures an historic moment in time and Diego Maradona will always be an iconic figure in the history of the beautiful game.
I still remember the day as if it were yesterday and I was so fortunate to have my moment in the complete chaos after the trophy presentation when 5,000 Argentinian fans ran widely amongst the players and the press corp. Maradona, riding high on Argentinian shoulders, looked straight at me – arms aloft with the trophy in his right hand. Little did I know, then as a 20 year old, that I had a photograph that would stand the test of time.
Available Sizes (Framed Size)
- Standard: 45" x 60" (114 cm x 152 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.