Untitled work image by Holly Lynton

Since last summer, I have been having a back and forth with JBG artist Holly Lynton as she works on developing her newest body of work. One of the great aspects of my job is getting to be a part of the process: watching projects develop and getting sneak peaks into all of the images that photographers go though before choosing what will make the final cut.

Holly’s new images, photographs of the relationships between man and animal, have such a quiet intensity. It is as if she captures these moments of connection that transcend the implied chaos and noise that is surrounding the subjects. Think of a beautiful and peaceful picture of a man whose face is covered in bees. In the above work, it is this almost “divine” moment between the girl and these turkeys amidst squawking I can only imagine and the commotion of flying feathers – an often used cinematic gesture for any type of chaos or crash in a rural scene. She becomes, as Holly and I have been referring to her in our back and forth, “The Turkey Madonna.”

Holly normally likes to keep her projects under wraps until completion but thankfully I could convince her to let me show one image from her current work in development. Here is what Holly had to say via email about her recent work:

I left New York for Massachusetts farm country in part to live the locavore life, defined mainly as eating locally, sustainably, and organically. What I hadn’t anticipated is how it is more often than not an extension of people’s spiritual lives. In my photography, I was initially drawn to photographing individuals who confront dangers in nature, allowing themselves to be vulnerable. Examples of these are bee keepers who wear no protective clothing and catfish noodlers who fish for seventy pound catfish with their bare hands. While photographing them, I watched them enter a transformative and meditate state that I see also exists in certain farm activities. I observed a reverence for nature rather than the absence of fear. Much of the current literature and film presents the negative sides of industrial farming without enough celebration of the positive aspects of small scale, sustainable, local, organic farms. I am interested in photographing people who work with animals on these farms and in the wild to expose the spiritual conviction they have for this way of life, as a gesture to my commitment and belief in its importance as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 11:25 am by Jeffrey Teuton and is filed under artists, photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.