This month John Borstel, one of our Photoworks faculty, extended the opportunity to participate in a project by his colleague Cassie Meador called The Hand You're Dealt. As part of a larger project, each photographer was sent a random playing card and asked to incorporate it in a photograph. I got the Ace of Clubs.
Coincidentally, a road trip this month took me through some farm towns where I was struck by how hardscrabble life looks for small farmers. And I don't think it's just the recession. For city people like me, the small family farm is a symbol of stability and idyllic country life. But in harsh reality farming is also a gamble, staking hard work against weather, crops, markets, and loan rates. It's a gamble that spans generations and is often lost.
I took a few photos with the playing card on the trip but they weren't very interesting on their own, so I decided to make one of the prints part of a scene entitled Betting the Farm (One More Year). I don't usually do this kind of studio/staged work so it was a fun experiment. Playing cards relate to both gambling and fortune telling, and there are elements of both in the scene, which is obviously a bit unreal. The tension in the hands contrasts with the mundanity of the setting -- the farmer's life includes both, the big gamble and the monotonous labor of getting through another year.
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