Will Vogt: “People Are Rarely As Buttoned-Up As They Appear” — Blind Journal

In America, fortune is usually written within the plural of homes. Will Vogt owns three, which have additionally served as his looking grounds as a photographer: a house in Corpus Christi, on the Texas Gulf coast; the household ranch, additionally in Texas; and, in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, the summer time home the place his household has gathered — and let themselves be photographed — for generations.

The boy he as soon as was grew up elsewhere, in Haverford, Pennsylvania. More drawn to books than to sport, he found F. Scott Fitzgerald at boarding college, fell for his hero, Gatsby, and obtained his first digicam not lengthy after. From then on, it was his personal world he turned the lens towards.

More than 70,000 photographs later, Will Vogt is way over a chronicler of American wealth. His debut, These Americans, printed in 2023, offered out. Three years later, Behind the Hedges returns to the identical rituals — epic hunts, grand weddings, personal society rallies — however the snapshot has given solution to one thing extra composed, and the urgency of youth to one thing extra restrained. Interview.

Your earlier guide, These Americans, caught the second. Behind the Hedges, your new guide, composes it into tableaux. In sensible phrases, what modified in the best way you shoot and sequence photographs between the 2 books?

Will Vogt: I’m undecided that the best way I shoot modified as a lot as my materials has. The creation of digital images has additionally allowed me to seize extra element, which in flip makes bigger tableau photographs potential.

These Americans drew closely from images I took within the Eighties after I was youthful and life round me was transferring fairly quick. Behind the Hedges returns to lots of the similar folks, locations and traditions thirty years later. I’m older as are lots of my topics and in consequence the images have slowed down a little bit too.

What did change enormously was my understanding of modifying and sequencing. Before working with Jennifer Garza-Cuen on These Americans, I actually had no thought how a images guide was put collectively. I discovered that it isn’t a group of your finest images. In a guide, the person photographs need to work collectively, create a rhythm and inform a narrative.

In Behind the Hedges, your body typically leans on the pure or constructed structure of a setting: a number one line attracts the attention towards the façade of Lainston House, desk and chairs organized within the foreground; elsewhere, a swimming pool fills the foreground of the picture. What place does aesthetic maintain in your work?

Will Vogt: A vital one. I could also be documenting one thing however I nonetheless need to make nice images. I’ve all the time been aware of composition, gentle and the connection between folks and the locations they inhabit.

The environment are additionally a part of the story. A home, a swimming pool, a taking pictures area or a eating room tells you one thing concerning the folks within the {photograph} earlier than you realize something about them. Sometimes the setting is each bit as necessary because the folks.

In the essay he wrote to accompany These Americans, novelist Jay McInerney, writer of Bright Lights, Big City, says “there’s no pane of glass” between you and your topics. Doesn’t that closeness encroach on the space a photographer generally wants from his topic?

Will Vogt: Familiarity offers me nice entry, however greater than that it permits folks to be snug round me and the digicam. That is an incredible benefit.

I believe that’s the place the photographer has to create his personal distance. You’re a part of the scene however you’re additionally eliminated sufficient to doc it. I’ve been doing that for many of my grownup life, so I don’t give it some thought very consciously anymore.

One {photograph} in Behind the Hedges reveals nothing however the filthy window of a Range Rover, finger-written with the road: “I wish my wife was as dirty as this.” The hole between a message that crude and a world that buttoned-up appears to please you, as if you have been endlessly looking for the grain of sand which may jam the machine…

Will Vogt: I do like that {photograph} and significantly the contradiction and the humor. I don’t assume I’m looking for one thing to jam the machine. I’m searching for issues that make the image extra sophisticated and thought-provoking than what you may anticipate.

There are loads of preconceived concepts about this world and pictures like that one upset these expectations a little bit. People are not often as buttoned-up as they seem. That’s what makes them attention-grabbing to {photograph}.

Behind the Hedges opens on a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, as an epigraph, earlier than the primary {photograph}. What place does literature maintain in your eye as a photographer?

Will Vogt: I’ve all the time learn lots and I’m definitely interested in writers who’re good observers of individuals and social worlds. I fell in love with the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a boy, about the identical time I began taking photos. He understood that wealth and privilege could possibly be each seductive and complex. I believe I’ve documented a few of that in my very own work.

When I’m taking {a photograph}, I’m not enthusiastic about Fitzgerald or attempting to make a picture look literary. Those connections are inclined to emerge later. {A photograph} can include a complete story with out explaining it. In that sense, I suppose images and literature have rather a lot in widespread.

Behind the Hedges returns repeatedly to scenes of killing: a pit of zebra carcasses, partridges hung in neat rows, hares laid out on moss. What do these scenes of slaughter reveal, in your view, about this supposedly well-mannered society?

Will Vogt: I in all probability wouldn’t use the phrase slaughter. Hunting has been a big a part of my life and of the world I {photograph}. Those photographs are a part of the fact of it. I don’t see a motive to sanitize that actuality by displaying the taking pictures social gathering and leaving out the useless recreation.

There can also be an extended custom surrounding looking, significantly in England and South Texas. The recreation, the land, the canine, the folks and the rituals surrounding all of it are related. I {photograph} what’s there and depart it to the viewer to resolve what she or he thinks about it.

The English photographer Martin Parr, who died in December 2025, spent his life photographing the British center and dealing courses and their mass leisure — however as an observer, from exterior that world, with a watch that was affectionate and infrequently satirical. You do the alternative: you’ve all the time photographed the American elite you have been born into, from the within. Do you’re feeling any kinship with him nonetheless?

Will Vogt: Absolutely. I’ve all the time admired Martin Parr’s work. We got here at our topics from barely completely different angles however I believe we shared an curiosity within the small particulars that let you know one thing bigger about folks and the best way they reside.

Parr was good at noticing issues that different folks walked proper previous. His images could possibly be humorous with out merely making enjoyable of individuals. I hope there may be a few of that observational high quality in my work.

Jennifer Garza-Cuen, the editor of Behind the Hedges, locations your work alongside Larry Sultan, Stephen Shore and Tod Papageorge. What did you’re taking from every of them, and what reveals up from these influences in your individual eye?

Will Vogt: Those three photographers are masters of their craft and I’m honored that anybody would point out me in the identical sentence with them. Robert Frank was clearly the earliest and most necessary affect on my work. I’ve collected images and images books for a few years and inevitably a few of what I’ve absorbed has turn out to be a part of the best way I see and {photograph} the world.

If somebody opened Behind the Hedges realizing nothing about you and determined it was satire, what would you inform them?

Will Vogt: I’d inform them they’re entitled to see it that approach. Once you place images into the world, you lose management over how folks interpret them.

But satire isn’t my intention. I’m not attempting to have fun these folks and I’m not attempting to ridicule them. I’m recording a world I do know and have been a part of for my complete life. There is humor within the images as a result of there may be humor in life. There are additionally contradictions and infrequently absurdity. I don’t assume you need to manufacture any of that. You simply have to note it.

As a youngster, you noticed Jimi Hendrix reside — a world on the reverse finish of the one you’ve been photographing ever since. You additionally cite the Beatles and Bob Dylan amongst your influences. Doesn’t that irreverent spirit discover its extension in the best way you {photograph} excessive society — as a little bit of a troublemaker your self?

Will Vogt: I like the concept of being a troublemaker, though I’m undecided I’ve earned the title.

Music was an enormous affect on me after I was younger and nonetheless is. Hendrix, Dylan and the Beatles all arrived at a time when a variety of accepted concepts about the way you have been alleged to reside have been being challenged. I used to be definitely affected by that.

Maybe a few of that does present up within the images. I’ve by no means felt any obligation to make this world look the best way it would prefer to see itself. If one thing is humorous, unusual, awkward or a little bit outrageous, I’m in all probability going to take the image. Maybe that’s my small contribution to troublemaking.

“Will Vogt: These Americans” runs by way of December 6, 2026 on the Art Museum of South Texas.

Behind the Hedges (2026), images by Will Vogt, edited and with textual content by Jennifer Garza-Cuen, is printed by Schilt Publishing.

These Americans (2023) by Will Vogt is printed by Schilt Publishing.