Texas photographer Randal Ford has shot major advertising campaigns and magazine covers. But he’s best known for sophisticated portraits of animals that take a cue from fashion photography.
In Bug the baby longhorn, he discovered a budding supermodel. The lanky calf, photographed when he was just days old, is a natural beauty, with his lustrous speckled coat and wide-set eyes. But it’s clearly Ford’s art-directing alchemy that elevates him from barn dweller to heartbreaker, as he turns toward the camera with his long lashes, one foot gingerly posed in front of the other.
Photos of Bug are among more than 200 images in Ford’s latest book, Farm Life: A Collection of Animal Portraits, published by Rizzoli. His third monograph with the publisher — following Good Dog (2020) and The Animal Kingdom (2018) — Farm Life includes portraits of goats, pigs, llamas, chickens, ducks, rabbits, horses and a surprising variety of cows.
While more typical animal photographers capture their subjects in their natural habitats, Ford photographs his in a studio. For Farm Life, which was shot mostly around his home state, he set up temporary studios inside barns.
“We see a lot of beautiful wildlife photography out there, but I wanted to do something different that felt more like a fashion-esque portrait,” says Ford. It’s not surprising to learn that he counts Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Patrick Demarchelier among his inspirations.
“I love how classic fashion photographers used simple backgrounds and let the talent and the apparel be the story, shining through under elegant and sophisticated lighting,” he says. “So, as my animal portrait work evolved, it became clear that this was influencing a lot of my aesthetics — how I lit them and how I posed them.”
“Ford’s work brings an artistic depth that mirrors the emotional storytelling found in high-fashion editorials,” says Alex Trimper, of Trimper Gallery, in Greenwich, Connecticut, who has been representing Ford since 2019. “His use of high contrast, the theatrical quality of his lighting and his immaculate composition all evoke a cinematic experience.”
The image maker has hit on a pared-down signature style that puts his subjects front and center without the distraction of a setting or props. “I always liked how cohesive Avedon was, like what he did with the American West,” he says. “I think it makes it more visually interesting to have that signature cohesiveness.”
Ford poses the animals so that they’re looking straight at the camera — or as close as he can get them. But it’s also imperative to him to capture more than just a pretty face. He wants character, which he finds in subtle movements of the eyes or ears or mouth. “A little glimpse of what I see as personality or soul,” he says. “That can take 30 shots or 300. It’s like, suddenly their head goes up and you catch a little twinkle in their eyes.”
Finding the right farm animals — especially beautiful, interesting or expressive breeds — was key, says Ford, who has a pet dog and cat. “Most of them aren’t on TikTok or Instagram, but there are some niche Facebook groups, like for longhorns or fancy or exotic chickens. I joined a few of those groups and just put feelers out.” A handy index in the back of Farm Life tells the story of each of the animals that Ford selected.
Given that these nonhuman sitters (or standers) are harder to direct than human models, it’s remarkable just how still they appear, as if they are truly posing. To position them, Ford relied on assistance from the animals’ owners or farmhands. Bug, whom Ford found through a network of farmers and longhorn lovers, was especially wobbly on his newborn legs, but we wouldn’t know it from his photo.
With Farm Life, which includes many adorable cows in addition to Bug, Ford has come full circle from his animal-portraiture debut. It all began with a commission for Dairy Today magazine, which a branding agency had been hired to reimagine.
“I had been photographing people with these bright-colored backgrounds and really nice studio lighting,” he recounts. “The creative director at the firm saw my work and asked me if I thought I could photograph cows the same way. We went to a barn with these beautiful show dairy cows that had just been groomed and were just really stunning. We set up a mobile studio in a barn with these bright-colored backgrounds. And we ended up photographing 10 cows that became covers for the magazine for the next year.”
His work took off within the graphic-design community and led him to photographing other animals.
“Normally, people would get into this by photographing a dog or the cat or something more traditional,” he says. “But I got into this by photographing cows.”
