Leader of the Pack
DAVID YARROW
LEADER OF THE PACK 2019
Archival Pigment Print on 315gsm Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta Paper
Each is signed, dated and numbered on the front.
Edition Size: 12
Available in the following sizes:
STANDARD:
Print Size: 37" x 50"
Framed Size: 48” x 61" (122 cm x 193.1 cm)
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**In stock. Available for immediate shipment or delivery**
LARGE:
Print Size: 56" x 76"
Framed Size: 67” x 87” (170 cm x 221 cm)
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Framed in David Yarrow's custom black ash frame with white archival mat and UV protective acrylic.
Please contact us at +312.852.8200 for more details about this work.
Or email us at info@hilton-asmus.com
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David Yarrow's Statement about LEADER OF THE PACK:
The Harley-Davidson is a heavy- weight brand - like Coke and Mc- Donalds, it was integral to the flourishing of the American Dream. The brand is emblematic of the post 1945 roll out of the US highway network that offered the American population the freedom to travel for travel’s sake. As Robert Louis Stevenson said: “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
My preconception was that if we were to use Harley-Davidsons for our “Road Trip” series in America, we needed a visual template that was “bad ass” from every perspective. We could not do this is in a half-hearted way - there was a responsibility to kill it.
All the bikers clearly had to be dudes and my preference was for the bikes themselves to be from the late 1930s through to the 1970s. I want- ed choppers that aficionados would recognize and celebrate as I was determined that seasoned bikers could love the image as much as my followers. My hunch was that this might be the first and only time that these two demographics would meet. There was a required level of authenticity and attention to detail, but nothing insurmountable. My production team - Brawler - is first class at looking after that and indeed sourced the famous 1936 Knucklehead Chopper and a 1946 Harley Davidson sidecar.
The location was key. We had to find somewhere that complemented the bikes and romanticized the freedom of travel that the Harley-Davidson brand evokes. This instructed to- wards depth in the image, as the longer the road, the more emphatically it conveyed the sense of a journey. My intuition was also that this was a shot that needed to be in California, or at least in John Ford’s American West, as the topography and sense of place reinforces the brand.
The creative prompts were movies like Easy Rider - the classic 1969 Dennis Hopper film starring Peter Fonda. America is the home of big scenery and we needed big scenery. Our internet trawling finally led us towards the Valley of Fire in Nevada - a remote park one hour’s drive north east of Las Vegas. It had depth and the moon like rock structures either side of the road continually drag the eye back to that road. If any vista could be described as “bad ass”, this was it.
And so it was that the crew assembled in the modest “Breaking Bad” village of Overton, Nevada
last Tuesday night - the bikers from California, my usual five wolves from Montana and of course the delightful Bryana Holly - who agreed to come and work with us on this assignment. I think she might have been used to slightly nicer accommodation, but it was a joy to work with her.
Photography can often be about maths as much as it is about inspiration and my deliberations on site the previous day were all about the need to compress distance, but also offer decent depth of field. The lens choice - my old reliable 85mm was key - nothing else in the camera box- es worked.
The result is a blowout image and I think everyone involved should give themselves a pat on the back (and that is a big number of people). I look forward to Harley-Davidson’s reaction. It really is a monster of a photograph - far better than I had hoped for. I looked at in LA for at least an hour on Friday.
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DAVID YARROW BIOGRAPHY:
Born Glasgow, Scotland in 1966., David Yarrow took up photography at an early age and as a 20-year-old found himself working as a photographer for The London Times on the pitch at the World Cup Final in Mexico City. On that day, David took the famous picture of Diego Maradona holding the World Cup and, as a result, he was subsequently asked to cover the Olympics and numerous other sporting events.
Yarrow’s evocative and immersive photography of life on earth is most distinctive and it has earned him an ever growing following among collectors. He has firmly established himself as one of the bestselling fine art photographers in the world, with the limited edition prints regularly selling at over $70,000 and with recent work selling in the six figures at auction.
At the Sotheby’s photography auction in London in May 2017, Yarrow’s iconic image from South Sudan – MANKIND – was sold for $75,000, the highest of the 100 lots in the show. In April of 2018 year David’s image “The Wolf of Main Street” sold for $100,000 and was the highest bid for piece by a living photographer. Most recently “78 Degrees North” went for an even more impressive $110,000.
In 2016, Rizzoli New York published Yarrow’s latest book – Wild Encounters – with a foreword written by HRH The Duke of Cambridge (Prince William). The book was awarded “Art Book of 2017” by Amazon and has already sold out a second print run. All Yarrow’s royalties from the book continue to be donated to Tusk, the leading British NGO that focuses on animal conservation in Africa.
Philanthropy and conservation are central to David Yarrow’s passion to document the animal and human world in a fresh and creative way. In 2019 charitable donations from the sale of David’s images exceeded $2.5 million.
David Yarrow is brand ambassador for Land Rover and UBS Bank; he is European ambassador for Nikon Camera. In December 2017 he shot Tag Heuer LVMH’s latest “Don’t Crack Under Pressure” campaign with model and actress Cara Delevingne. In January 2019, David collaborated with American icon Cindy Crawford.
In September 2019, Rizzoli published Yarrow's 368 page photography monograph, showcasing 150 of David’s strongest images from the past two years. The book features a foreword written by global NFL star Tom Brady and an afterword written by American cultural icon Cindy Crawford. All royalties from this book will be donated to conservation charities Tusk, in the UK and WildAid, in the US.