JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING - 2025
Telling stories of the Wild West in one single image is a challenging brief, as no matter the number of layers a photographer tries to incorporate in one frame, there can be a sense that he or she always wants to say more. After all, the “Push West” is the greatest story ever told.
That is why snow is such a helpful variant as it adds an extra character for free and we welcome that. I want to be visually greedy without overplaying it and bad weather or snow is often the solution. We like to work in bad weather or the remnants of it.
The language of light is the cornerstone of photography and I am drawn to the risk/reward ratio of working in sub optimal ambient light. This is particularly true when there is a Western brief, as this was a metaphorically dark and sinister era. The loosely governed nights were long and presumably full of menace.
In the same way that we would tell stories of Palm Beach society life in the richness of full daytime sunshine, tales of the lawless “final frontier” beg for a more Hitchcockian mood. I had this lighting in mind in the few days before I took this photograph in the mountains of Wyoming.
The concept was to build a saloon that looked marooned in the middle of nowhere and in so doing play to the vastness and emptiness of the Wild West. I sensed that half an hour before dusk would allow the lanterns in the old saloon to glow a little whilst also having enough daylight to tell an outdoor narrative. 30 minutes either side of then and it would be suboptimal.
Hollywood has long cast Westerns with a deeply masculine skew - almost to the point of parody. Therein lies an opportunity, because women must have been an integral part of the push West and I like to celebrate powerful women in my stories. The Austrian actress in this photograph, Heidi Berger, owns this stage - she has beauty, femininity and grace in her role but be in no doubt that she will pull the trigger if forced.
This picture is a homage to all those women out there who take no shit.