My work - a statement

For several years my family and I owned and lived on a small ranch property outside Woodland, California, where my wife and I kept a couple of horses. One afternoon while fixing a fence in the pasture, I looked across to our little Appaloosa horse, Sugar Britches. She had been distracted from her grazing by a breeze out of the North, and was staring across the neighboring fields and hills. I caught myself wondering what she was thinking — if she was remembering something from her past. I thought perhaps she was momentarily experiencing an ancient memory, buried deep in the consciousness of her breed. Perhaps she saw herself running in a herd across the hills of the Palouse, where the Appaloosa horses were originally bred.

Being a photographer, I wondered how I could capture that emotion, and express it to others. How could I create images that instilled a feeling of freedom and antiquity, of a collective and shared consciousness between animals and humans?

Horses and humans have a bond going back thousands of years. It’s in our blood and it’s in theirs. How many times have we driven past horses in a pasture and had a sudden, if momentary, feeling of relaxation, that we’ve returned to someplace simpler and carefree?

Of course, horse owners are aware of the fantasy of the horse. They understand that to raise, care for and train a horse is a lot of work! But with that work comes the rewards of sharing a deep working relationship with a creature that understands you as well as you understand it.

Horses in imagery and art have a tradition going back as far as our relationship with the animals themselves. Horses have represented many things to us through the ages. At one time they represented wealth and power. Today, we see them as representing freedom in a time and place hard to reach in today’s hectic world.

We identify with horses socially, as herd animals. The interactions between horses in a group, between mothers and their offspring, their tenderness toward each other and competition for superiority bring out timeless emotions in us.

In my photography, I hope to capture and express the human emotions that we feel when we observe and experience these magnificent creatures.

-Steve German

Photo above: "Light Passage," an image I made of our Appaloosa horse, Sugar Britches, after the death of my wife in 2008.

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