Fox path
- 📍 Location: Croissy-sur-Seine, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
A fox on a woodland track near Croissy-sur-Seine, sitting in the middle of the path at a distance no lens could disguise. Everything in the frame leads to him: the two ruts converge, the verges of white flowers converge, the trees close overhead into a green tunnel and converge as well. He is the smallest thing in the photograph and the only place the eye can land.
This is a deliberate refusal. The obvious picture here was a portrait, and I have made that one elsewhere. In this frame I wanted the animal restored to his real size inside the landscape he actually uses, because a fox in the countryside is almost always a small event at the end of a long perspective, noticed late and gone quickly.
The light is soft spring light under cloud, the kind that keeps the greens separated instead of burning them into a single mass and lets the white flowers hold their value without glaring. It is also the light that makes the path look longer than it is.
We looked at each other for perhaps two seconds. Then he stood, took three steps into the grass, and there was no longer a fox in the photograph at all.
I wanted the print to hold the moment just before that, when the path is still occupied and the encounter has not yet been withdrawn.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
