Riders

I have photographed riders for twenty-five years. Horses have been part of my life since early childhood; I ride and care for my own horses, and they have repeatedly entered my work not as a recurring motif, but through specific situations, relations and structures.

The seven photographs in Riders were made in 2023 during my third month-long stay on a tiny island near Lombok, Indonesia. On the island, where combustion-engine vehicles are absent, horses are part of everyday transport and tourism. I worked repeatedly with horse guides from local horse-owning families.

One man appears in six of the seven photographs; over many days we developed a shared rhythm. I prepared costumes and objects in the bungalow at night, but once we reached the beach the plan began to loosen. I would let a rider move, watch what happened, suggest an action, and ask him to repeat or refine something when the situation became unexpectedly charged. The horse, the rider, heat, wind, water, exhaustion and misunderstanding kept changing what was possible.

Sometimes the wind swallowed my instructions completely. Lost in translation became part of the method. The shoots carried an erotic charge that was difficult to locate in any one body. It emerged between riders and horses, fed by heat, costumes, physical effort and friction. It intensified as my direction began to slip. That loss of control was what I was waiting for.

Through the viewfinder, something third could suddenly appear between rider, horse, costume and camera — a figure that exceeded its parts and might disappear a second later. Those slips opened brief freedoms from fixed roles and expectations: how a rider should look, how a man should behave, how a body should be read. Sometimes the figure looked almost classical, sometimes absurd, awkward or uncanny. The costume could take over. For a moment, horse and rider lent their bodies to another figure.

Riders is not conceived as a photographic series, nor as seven autonomous photographs brought together in an installation. It is a single spatial work whose material is photography. The prints are pasted directly onto the wall in a fixed sequence, scale and spacing; they have no autonomous status as photographic objects. Its extended horizontal scale makes viewing a bodily and temporal experience. The images, the architecture and the movement of the viewer through the space become part of the same encounter.

Riders, from left to right: Rider with Tableware I, Rider (Rubber Apron) III, Rider Looking Back, After the Ride I, Rider and Guide II, Rider (Rubber Apron) II, Stuttering Rider.