From tea & water’s interview with Jesse Burke:
[t&w]: That opposition in your pictures brings out such richness and sharpness – your eye, as the viewer, is pulled back and forth.
[JB]: My goal is always to have my portraits embody both those spirits at the same time. When you add those really soft, heroic and sort of beat up gladiator photos into a bloody battle scene, you get a richer picture. You have images of dead animals, men with muddy sweatshirts and beautiful landscapes. It’s always been my mode of operation. I think we all operate on a sliding scale. Take masculinity, for example. It ranges from hyper masculine to feminine and it’s constantly sliding around. Certainly some people live at one end of the scale but for most average people it slides around. And I want my photographs to represent that timeline. As you go through the work, certainly with Intertidal, Blind and Wild & Precious, the images are meant to make you feel those emotional responses, which will hopefully trigger richer feelings about the work and a deeper understanding of it.
Browse the series “Wild & Precious” at ClampArt
Browse the series “Intertidal” at ClampArt
Browse all of Jesse Burke’s work at ClampArt