Sharon Lockhart
Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California
Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Sharon Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community. Lockhart traveled around California’s Central Valley, spending time with cattle ranchers on their properties and attending livestock auctions with them, and getting a sense of the rhythm of their lives. Throughout this time, the artist shot more than one hundred four-by-five-inch negatives but chose to print just this one from the series.
Sharon Lockhart is both a filmmaker and a photographer, and she moves seamlessly between the two. All of her work, regardless of medium, offers a prolonged investigation of the subject at hand. The artist’s almost anthropological sensibility leads her to spend months, even years, working with the same community, whether in Bath, Maine, or Lodz, Poland, resulting in provocative and thorough studies of people and places.