PHOTO ESSAY

Buck Shot

The portrait photography of Chris Buck

By Matthew McKinnon

March 21, 2006

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Chris Buck, “Namesake Photo Series,” 2005.

About six years ago, Buck began a promotional project to photograph other men named Chris Buck. He found and took pictures of several of them, but was displeased with the results. The exercise helped him realize that as much as he was willing to push celebrities who are used to having their picture taken, he was reluctant to demand the same level of risk-taking from civilians.

Buck put the project aside, but resumed it last year. He discovered this Chris Buck, an English grad student, by Googling his dissertation. They chatted over e-mail; the interest in a portrait was mutual. When Buck the photographer had a shoot scheduled in Denmark, he detoured to England to shoot Buck the academic. They met at the latter’s former middle school, which had been closed a year before. Vandals had broken a water line, flooding the ground floor. The set-up seemed obvious.

“He had read a lot of my website, he really knew my work well. He said to me, ‘You know, Chris, I feel like you’re not pushing me enough. It feels like you want to take it further but you’re not doing it.’ After putting him in this freezing water — eventually we got to the middle of his chest, in the winter — I think he felt satisfied that I’d pushed him enough.”