As a photographer you may encounter models that are difficult. However you can usually be secure in the knowledge that your subject won’t try to nibble your clothes, do their business on the floor or run away.
Kevin Horan has had no such luck, since for a number of years, his models have been goats and sheep.
/Kevin Horan
Describing himself as a “recovering photojournalist,” Illinois-based Horan has had his work published in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, LIFE, U. S. News & World Report, National Geographic, and numerous other magazines and books. He’s photographed U. S presidential candidates, remote Russian villagers, workers in the Amazon, and almost every kind of person in-between. His ongoing project however, Chattel, dissects and questions the form of portraiture by swapping out his human subjects with barnyard animals.
Horan says he was first alerted to the unique qualities of these creatures by observing the dozen sheep that lived across the road from him. “Goats and sheep occupy that middle ground where they are not so familiar that we already anthropomorphize them like dogs,” Horan says “and yet they still have facial features than can correspond to human faces. With dogs, say, or baby animals, the viewer doesn’t have to make the leap. ”
/Kevin Horan
It is rather sweet to imagine Horan’s concept for Chattel, which he describes as “the local farm animals go down to the local photo studio to have their portraits made. ” The process isn’t quite so simple, however. “The reality is that the studio goes to them, and all the effects you see are done in camera. It takes several hours of setup. ”
Each shoot requires gathering some “not-too-wild” goats or sheep, and what Horan describes as “a very hardworking human handler. ” Horan will lead his likely subjects into the well-lit area he’s set up and pray that they’ll stay there and stand still. Often this involves leading them through the light over and over and seeing what he can snap on his Pentax 645Z.
Contemplating the tedium involved in that process, we recall how W. C Fields once said that as a rule one should never to work with animals or children; an adage Horan can easily relate to. Speaking of the difficulties he says “It confirmed what I already knew: animals and children are hard. You just have to be patient and not try to coerce. ”
/Kevin Horan
Many of the goats used in the project live at the New Moon Farm goat rescue sanctuary in Arlington, Washington, providing Horan with a wide casting pool, but he’s still very picky about his models.
“As I look at a group of candidates at a given place, I’m interested in certain ones—the wonderful faces--just as you would be in a roomful of people,” Horan says. But just like their human counterparts, personalities can sometimes be an absolute pain. “I might pick out a great one, and the owner will say ‘Oh, no way—we’ll never get close to her. ’ Others, we try, and see what happens. ” In many cases, Horan tells us, that bribing them with treats helps.
Behind all the wool, Horan believes that Chattel is actually asking serious questions about the essence of portraiture. An expert in the field, he has spent years photographing people for magazines as well as receiving great acclaim for his portrait photography Street Census series. Horan specifically uses them as a reference for what he is doing now.
/Kevin Horan
“The funny thing about this project,” he explains, “is that the questions about portraiture that it raises could be applied to all those human portraits. Does the photo really let us know another? Or do we just make it up based on everything we as viewers bring to it?”
Considering his open support of New Moon Farm and the anthropomorphic nature of the Chattel project, is there is an intentional animal rights message to the project? He answers honestly, saying “That wasn’t my intention but it seems unavoidable, doesn’t it? While the project is not an animal rights project per se, I happen to believe that in a hundred years we’ll look back at our treatment of animals now as cruel and outrageous. ”
Horan has already begun work on another new project that is equally abstract. A study of beautiful death imagery within nature. However, Chattel is far from finished. Horan hopes to expand out beyond goats and sheep to other species. His continuation is driven by an ongoing wish for his audience to truly consider what they are looking at.
“I hope the pictures allow viewers to go to a place where they really wonder what’s inside that personage in the picture,” Horan says. “That’s what I do. I am still not sure if I’m looking at a collection of gestures that I arrange into a personality; or if I’m really seeing the essence of another creature. ”
You can find more about Kevin Horan's Chattel project and his upcoming projects on his website
. digitalrev.com2016-10-7 03:00