36 16 May 2020 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
Photo Stories
ALL IMAGES © VICTORIA DEMPSTER
‘I
love Robert Capa’s war
photography and I think of these
boys in this daredevil way, almost
like they’re going into battle. If they
were born at a different time, they’d be going
off to war to prove themselves instead of riding
a bull,’ says full-time artist and photographer
Victoria Dempster. The protagonist of her Travel
Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) 2019
runner-up award in the People and Cultures
category, has been in the wars. ‘When Dominic
was 12 he was shot in the left leg by his friend.
Before then he was never into guns or bull
riding but after the shooting, he wanted to
prove what he was capable of.’
Dominic, now 15, has a prosthetic leg which
often fl ies off when he’s competing. He’s not on
talking terms with his friend although his mum
bought a pair of cowboy boots for Dominic. The
law didn’t really get involved in the shooting,
which perhaps isn’t surprising as Victoria
explains: ‘It’s quite a rough place. Since I’ve
been there, one cowboy has been crushed by a
bull, another, aged 18, killed himself in a car
accident and another became paraplegic from
rolling his car. Riding bulls is really dangerous,
it’s insane what they do, I think that bleeds into
their everyday life.’
The everyday life Victoria is talking about is
in and around Utah, USA, where she now lives.
After 20 years teaching art at a secondary
school in north London and 20 years keeping
in touch with a mountain-bike guide she had
met on holiday, she chose marriage and
swapped the city for the desert.
‘Once I landed in America I was looking for a
project and went to a rodeo nearby. It’s a
photographer’s dream, good looking guys,
dust, fl oodlights and great stories. I kept going
to a “local” one, 100 miles and a two-hour
drive away. I got to know the cowboys quite
well and started to ask if I could photograph
them at their work or house, which they were
more than happy to. I think my English accent
helped a lot. They’re quite amazing, the
teenagers are submerged in their culture,
super-friendly and have the confi dence to
hold a conversation with me.’Away from the rodeo circuit, Dominic lives in
a trailer with his mother and her boyfriend, his
sister and her boyfriend and his twin brother.
His life in Olathe, Colorado, famous for not
much other than the annual Sweet Corn
Festival, is very outdoors, and much of it lives
with him indoors – budgerigars, a parrot, dogs,
rabbits, fi sh, cats, lizards and a chameleon.
Many feature in Victoria’s photographs
including a snake, won by Dominic in a
competition, coiled around his belt buckle. She
also photographed the cuddly toys given to
him post-op, a framed prayer on the wall and
the rifl e leant next to his bed; there are echoes
of photographer Roger Ballen. It’s a life of
contradictions captured in Victoria’s contrasty
black & white photographs – a result of
exposing for the highlights and sliding up the
clarity on the digital fi les from her Nikon D750
cameras with 85mm and 35mm prime lenses.TPOTY award recognition
Victoria has temporarily swapped cowboys for
Indians. ‘After the 2004 tsunami hit, the
London school I worked at raised money and
began a partnership with a school in the Tamil
Nadu region of southern India,’ she tells me.
She has visited regularly for over a decade and
witnessed a dozen orphans of the tsunami go
on to further education and develop their lives
in remarkable ways. Victoria plans to travel
with them to the villages they grew up in and
document the regeneration.
It was while travelling through Asia that
Victoria learned of her TPOTY award, she had
previously been a fi nalist. ‘Apparently that’s
common. You have to get your name in there.
Keep sending the photos in. It’s nice to have a
pat on the back,’ she says from the end of a
crackly line. For this photographer, only a few
years out of teaching and trying to clear her
photographic path, the TPOTY exposure
matters. ‘When I go back to the cowboy
circuit, for them the award will be a big deal. It
gives me more of a way in and shows the
project is actually going somewhere. It would
be really nice to get Dominic some
sponsorship, that would be my dream.’No ordinar y
cowboy
Victoria Dempster needed a project when she
moved to Utah – the result garnered a runner-up
prize at Travel POTY, as Peter Dench fi nds out
Above: Dominic with one of his many dogs –
Dominic lives in a trailer with seven family
members and an array of dogs and other animals