A blood-splattered surgeon after an emergency horse op: Andrea Modica’s best photograph
After my first job in the 80s, I had a little money and set off for Italy with my camera and a backpack. I had grown up hearing about Italy, where my family is from, and so began 40 years of travelling back and forth – at times to teach photography, or for a relationship, and always to make photographs with no real agenda, just being in the moment.
My new book and the show that this image appears in spans my many visits. It was taken about six years ago. I became very interested in a horse hospital outside Bologna. I made a large body of work there and this first appeared in a book called Theatrum Equorum, Latin for Horse Theatre, all caught on an old-style large-format 8x10 camera.
I photographed horses that had been taken out of surgery, and put into these wonderful recovery boxes filled with shredded paper and beautiful light. To give you a sense of the size of the camera, it takes 8x10 inch negatives – a lot bigger than the tiny negatives from 35mm cameras. The large format meant I couldn’t photograph a horse galloping across a field.
In my work everybody knows they’re being photographed. They are reacting to me and the camera, and in a sense posing, but hopefully not appearing to be posing, which is where my skill comes in. With the horses in recovery, I had a few minutes before they came to. I also made pictures of the surgical tools, before and after surgery. Then I focused on the devices that stud horses mount to have sperm collected – that’s big business. The device is a stand-in for a female horse, but first the male smells an actual horse which they keep in heat for 365 days a year. Then there were some one-off images, and this is one of them.
Two people operated there: a head surgeon (the owner), and this woman, who I liked very much and connected with. In this image, she had just done emergency surgery on a horse with an obstruction in its gastrointestinal tract. The floor was covered in blood and the contents of the intestines. Many of the procedures I photographed were keyhole surgeries and the tools were very tidy, whereas this was really dramatic.
She came out of surgery looking like this. I asked if I could make her portrait – you’d have to be out of your mind not to want to photograph this incredible woman. We went outside into the shade where I knew the detail would show in all its glory, as opposed to in the sun.
I didn’t do it on purpose, but I like that her feet are covered so she looks like a column, and I think her hands resemble those I often saw on medieval wooden statues of saints and madonnas. This was all very unconscious, but I could see after that she looks like a statue, and I also think a very beautiful and very powerful woman. I like the picture for so many reasons that maybe somebody else wouldn’t consciously notice. But photographs can work on viewers without them knowing why.
I don’t title my work. Photography is so tied to the facts. The way the blood drips down from each one of the folds, each one becomes its own little painting. Those are facts that really existed. What we do with the facts can create an interesting story, which the viewer can ideally interpret for themself. Of course the photographer has to make the image seductive, so that a viewer actually wants to get to that point. I think this picture is at once elegant and yet has elements of horror. She’s powerful but she’s also covered in blood. There’s conflict.
Andrea Modica: Italian Story is at Alice Austen House, Staten Island, New York, until 20 February
Andrea Modica’s CV
Born: Manhattan, 1960
High point: I don’t look back and think something’s higher than what I’m doing now, even though it may have been a bigger accomplishment. I’m shooting a portrait today at 3 o’clock – that’s what I’m excited about right now
Top tip: The best work can be made if you disregard audience completely – an important message now, with people shooting and posting on social media directly. There’s something lost in the joy of the process of shooting if one thinks about the product