Four years ago, Paul Mobley was a professional photographer in search of artistic evolution. In a small coffee shop in rural Michigan, he found it.
Here’s what happened: He had been shooting fashion and commercial work almost nonstop for 15 years. For the first time, he found himself struggling to find the creative energy and sense of purpose that had fueled him faithfully throughout his career.
“I had gotten to the point where instead of picking up a camera and feeling joy, inspiration, and the love that you usually feel as an artist, I would shake, and my blood pressure would go up,” Mobley recalls. “I just didn’t feel right.”
Sensing that it was related to increasing pressure from demanding clients and crazy deadlines, he did something so many of us want to do, but never have the nerve. He called it quits.
“We had a cabin in northern Michigan. It was our place to get away. I made a decision that I was going to take the entire summer off and not pick up my camera.”
Now, anyone who knew Mobley at that time knew just how shocking a decision that was.
“It was huge because prior to that point, I couldn’t go a day without taking a picture,” he remembers. “But I knew I needed a break, a sabbatical, whatever you want to call it. I was going to be a better husband, and a better father to my kids who had seen this chaos for their entire lives growing up with me.”
Unbeknownst to Mobley at the time, he was also going to create American Farmer, the first portrait collection of modern American farmers and ranchers ever published.
And the book that would change his life.
Something About a Coffee Shop
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“There is a coffee shop in a teeny, little town close to our cabin,” Mobley says, and he’d been going in and out of that coffee shop for 15 years.
“I don’t even really drink coffee,” he laughs. “There’s just something about that coffee shop where all the regulars go and sit around the table — there’s no egos, no agendas, just a bunch of very honest, good people trying to solve the world’s problems over a cup of coffee.”
One day, Mobley found himself sitting across the table from a pig farmer he’d known for a long time. “I just looked at his face, and something went off inside me, so I said to him, ‘Donnie, do you mind if I take your picture?’ And he said, ‘Well, what do you want to take a picture of an ugly guy like me for?’ He hadn’t shaved in three days, and he was full of dirt and mud. But he said okay.”
So Mobley went back to his cabin, pulled out a camera he had stored away, and took the farmer’s portrait — just the way he wanted to take it. No people looking over his shoulder, telling him what they thought he should do, no ad layouts to follow, no clients to listen to.
“It was very refreshing to shoot it my way, and I didn’t care if anybody liked the pictures, because I loved them. They were honest and pure. Then I started to go from farmer to farmer.”
Mobley knew right away that he was stepping into a new way of working. “After years of shooting with large crews and a ton of expensive equipment, I traveled as lightly as possible from state to state, farm to farm, most often without an assistant or even a tripod,” he says. “The camera had always been my God — the key to unlocking a successful photograph. Now it became just a tool, a means to simply document what was there, and in many ways, the least important ingredient in the image making.”
At the end of that summer, refreshed and inspired, Mobley went back to the city to show his portfolio around. A magazine editor with whom he’d worked with in Santa Fe saw his farmers’ portraits, and agreed that they would make a book. So Mobley decided to contact the four best publishers of photo books in New York. “I went in with nothing but my little proof sheets — no agent, no prior books. It was hard to get in but once I did, all four offered me a deal right on the spot.”
Ultimately, he decided to go with Welcome Books. “Lena Tabori, the publisher, was very nurturing. I knew she would give me the attention I needed.” She also gave Mobley a bigger challenge. “She said, ‘You’ve got 20 farmers now: I need 200. You’ve got to hit the road, my friend. I want to do at least a 200-page book.’”
So, hit the road he did. “I decided I needed to find a farming organization that could help me find all the subjects, because Lena wanted at least 20 states. We ended up doing 37 in the end, from Alaska to Maine to Florida to Texas to North Dakota to Michigan to Georgia.”
He’d arrive at each farm and spend as much time as possible getting to know the farmer and his family, hearing their stories, walking their land, breaking bread. Then he’d take out his camera. “Pre-pro wasn’t about setting up lights or styling the subject. It was about studying the constellation of wrinkles on each farmer’s face, the way his eyes lit up every time his granddaughter’s name was mentioned, how his jaw tightened when he recalled the loss of a calf.”
The book grew from 200 pages to almost 280 pages, featuring more than 200 full-color and black-and-white portraits, and 45 interviews with farmers across the United States, and became a celebration of the living spirit of our heartland through the faces and voices of the people who keep it alive, telling the honest and inspiring stories of the true stewards of our land.
Willard Scott, in the book’s preface, says, “Mobley’s heroic images reveal the true face of American farming, and remind us what it means to live with simplicity, contentment, and decency in a world that so often forgets.”
And to think it all started in a tiny coffee shop in a tiny town.
A Clearer Vision
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Aside from giving Mobley a renewed sense of purpose and creative energy, American Farmer helped Mobley better understand his vision.
“You know how photographers can be indecisive,” he muses. “I’m not like that anymore. I know very clearly what I want to do. I’m able to look at the subject and the background, and say, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do, here’s how I’m going to light, here’s the film I’m going to use, and here’s the camera. That’s how this two-and-a-half year intense photo journey has helped me.”
The images Mobley created for American Farmer were captured both digitally and with film, KODAK PROFESSIONAL PORTRA 160VC Film, KODAK PROFESSIONAL TRI-X 320 and 400 Film and KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX Film being a few of his favorites. “I shot everything. I shot 35 mm, 120, 4 x 5. I have a tendency to take all my stuff when I go to shoot. ”
He opts for KODAK PROFESSIONAL PLUS-X Film when he wants a grittier feel, and KODAK T-MAX Film when he wants the images to be more precise. “I actually shot KODAK PROFESSIONAL TRI-X Film too, knowing that I could get the same result with a little higher ASA.”
As for his color images, he says, “I believe if you’re going to shoot color, the images should be really colorful, so if I’m shooting film, I’m pushing the film a little bit when I process it. I like big, vibrant color.”
Hello, Mr. Penn? It’s Me Again
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Mobley began his career the old-fashioned way. Assisting.
“I wanted to go after photographers whose work was interesting to me and that I loved. I tried harder than any photographer in the country to get into Irving Penn’s studio. I called religiously every Friday for four years.”
He never got in at Penn’s studio. But he did work with a few of his other favorite photographers, including Steve Steigman, David Langley, and Annie Leibovitz, and learned quite a bit in the process.
“Steigman was a wonderful director. His ability with people, and his ability to create, to take something that was very simple, two or three or four different components, say a chair, a person and a backdrop, and make something wonderful from it,” he says. “What I really enjoyed about Annie was her incredible drive and ability to get her subject. She too is an incredible director. It’s important that we have good equipment, good film, but all of that means little if you aren’t able to connect with people, to find the soul of your subject.”
Ironically, five years ago, Mobley was walking along 5th Avenue, past Penn’s studio. Feeling sentimental, he decided to call him one more time. “The same studio manager who answered the phone each time I called back then answered on that day. I told her how much I appreciated how nice she always was. She asked me if I could hold, and then said, ‘Where are you, can you come up?’ ”
So Mobley finally got to meet Penn, and to learn from Penn.
“I asked if he had any advice he could give me,” Mobley recalls, “He said, ‘Whatever you photograph, whether it’s a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of makeup, an 80-year-old man’s face, make it your own. Even if you have to hold it, carry it, sleep with it, live with it for weeks.’ As a photographer, that meant the world to me. It was like coming full circle.”
And it was a moment he’ll never forget.
Like Grandma’s Sauce
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Mobley admits that he was slow to develop his own style. “It takes awhile to be around all these other photographers and then finally say, ‘Alright. This is how I see it. This is how I would shoot it.’”
Though his style has become second nature, he’s hard-pressed to explain it. “People will ask me, ‘How do you decide how you’re going to light the person, how do you bring that expression out in a person?’ My grandmother was a great Italian cook, and before she passed away, I would take my wife over and say, ‘Grandma, teach Suzanne how to make that great sauce you make.’ She never wrote anything down. She never had any recipes. She did it all by feel. She’d throw in a handful of salt, a pinch of pepper, and all these other things. And it would be so funny to watch her show my wife how to make the sauce. And so for me, with photography, I can’t really tell people how to do it. I just start, taste, and look. That doesn’t look quite right? Let’s do this. Maybe I’ll change the film, the light should be here instead of there. In a lot of ways, I feel like a chef. I know what I want to do, and I know what I don’t like, and I just play with it until I get it right.”
Regardless of what he’s shooting, for Mobley, it’s always about the people. “I love to make that connection with the person. Whether I’m on a farm or in a homeless shelter, photographing boxers or the Russian circus, I love to make that connection,” he says. “I couldn’t shoot still lives. If I’m shooting a picture of three or four cupcakes, and if they’re not talking back to me, I can’t work. I love people.”
As for what makes a great portrait, Mobley says, “A great portrait is a photograph that leaves a lot of unanswered questions. It makes you wonder. It makes you want to know more about the subject. It’s powerful, it’s impactful, it stops you dead in your tracks for a minute, and your heart skips a beat, and your breath is taken away.”
Which is exactly what happens upon viewing the portraits in American Farmer.
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