From Cate McCaid’s article for The Boston Globe:
The first time photographer Jesse Burke took his daughter Clover on a road trip to go hiking — up through Maine to Canada — was pivotal for both of them.
“That’s when we bought Moosey,” says Clover, who was 4½ at the time, and is now 9 (10 in March, she’ll tell you). Moosey is a stuffed animal who goes on all the pair’s nature trips, some of which are featured in “Jesse Burke: Wild & Precious,” an exhibition spotlighting Clover’s relationship to the wild, at the RISD Museum.
Burke took something just as precious home. The artist, at that point, was known for his staged photographs of men, works that put masculinity under a microscope.
“I think of myself as producing photos,” he says. “Stand here, look here, wear this shirt.”
It’s not the most effective tactic with a 4½-year-old. “I wanted her to stand and look longingly at the ocean,” he remembers. “She wouldn’t, and I was frustrated, and yelling, ‘Please!’ ”
He gave up, but that night in their hotel room, “I opened the laptop, and it was like a glowing beacon,” Burke says. The photos he had taken of Clover following her own whims outshone any in which she attempted to pose.
Browse the exhibition “Wild & Precious” at ClampArt
Browse all of Jesse Burke’s work at ClampArt