Death in the Afternoon

Whilst taking portraits of people during a pheasant-shoot, I took multiple frames in order to capture the subjects with their eyes closed. Portrayed in this way the subjects appear withdrawn into a state of numb, private reflection. Where we might ordinarily seek connection through a subject’s gaze, here we are denied it, left instead to contemplate the stillness of their expressions.

The whiteness of the snow-covered fields, typically associated with purity or quiet beauty, here feels more like an erasure, a muffling of the surrounding world. Together, these elements seem to resonate with the small moments of death occurring throughout the day. The shoot proceeds with a certain rhythm; birds flushed, shots fired, birds falling, and the photographs exist outside of this, a momentary hiatus-​ with the silence of a ceasefire.

“As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace”. Henri Cartier-Bresson

This project was a selected winner in the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Exchange in 2011.