“I’ve made my kids do everything from being pooped on by animals to having snakes on their faces. They’ve done crazy things for me. One got on a billboard.”
Photographer Emily Neville Fisher’s three young children and her zoo-like coterie of birds, animals, and reptiles serve as both muses and models in her striking images that feel more like oil paintings than photographs. PETER DAVIS spoke to the artist near her home in Bedford, NY.
Your photographs feel like Old Master paintings.
My mom is a painter. I grew up around art all the time; in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, which is Wyeth country—Andrew Wyeth and N.C. Wyeth. My work emulates that. I thought I was going to be a painter. I like instant results. I’m not sure I would be a photographer if digital weren’t available.
You won an award for your first photograph, which was taken with an iPhone.
Everyone was coming up to me like, “What gear do you have? What camera did you use?” I was so embarrassed it was my iPhone. So, I vowed that day to go back to school and learn how to use a real camera, do my own editing, and not use filters. I started a photography club up; they talk gear all the time. I don’t care about that stuff. I want the picture to exist and that’s what I care about. I need to see right away if I got it, which is why I like digital. I’m a purist. I don’t Photoshop. I’m not cutting and pasting. What you’re seeing is the image that I’m taking. I hate sunny days. I like overcast. I like fog. I like flat light and no shadows. I want stuff that looks like it could have been a hundred years ago.
“Animals are like people because they have eyes, they look at the camera, they look away. Little personalities.”
Like Sally Mann, you photograph your children a lot.
I’ve made my kids do everything from being pooped on by animals to having snakes on their faces. They’ve done crazy things for me. One got on a billboard. I’m like, “Alex, that is the coolest thing for two truths and a lie. Someday you can say, I was on a billboard in New York City.”
Are the animals you photograph good models?
We probably have 30 birds. We have quail, chickens, ducks, and geese right now, plus a snake and a dog. We’ve had goats. Animals are like people because they have eyes, they look at the camera, they look away. Little personalities.
Emily Neville Fisher Photography
