Works of Art | EOS Project

Works of art

As Glen McClure admired the workmanship that had gone into creating old hand tools he realised that they are, in themselves, art forms.

Q: What is your photographic background?

I have been a professional photographer since starting out in 1977 as a photographer’s assistant at a production house in my hometown of Norfolk, Virginia, USA. I then worked eight years at an advertising agency as the in-house photographer. I have had my own studio in Norfolk since 1988.

Above Sanson shears. EOS 5D Mark IV, EF 24-70mm f2.8L USM lens at 57mm, 0.8 second at f22, ISO 400.

Q: What was the inspiration behind your idea to photograph tools as works of art?

One day I picked up one of my dad’s old hammers and it just struck me, right then, that “Wow, this is more than a hammer. This is a beautiful thing that I’m holding in my hand.” I thought about how someone had designed it, someone had forged it, and it sure is just beautiful to look at!

Sculpture

Once I’ve chosen an object and decided what it is I want to show about that particular tool, the actual composition is not all that hard since my goal is to show these items in a direct, honest way.

My thought is to place these tools in situations that you would usually never see them in, and to turn them into pieces of sculpture, almost.

I want to show folks that even the commonplace object like a wrench, a mallet, a screwdriver, is a beautiful object if you just stop and take the time to look at it. So the thought came to me that maybe a good idea would be to photograph these objects as cultural works of art.

Above: Awl punch tool. EOS 5D Mark IV, EF 24-70mm f2.8L USM lens at 62mm, 1/5 second at f16, ISO 400.

Using tungsten hot lights in my studio I set about to try and show the patina, texture, form and shape of these objects. Once Covid became a reality and I wasn’t able to travel, I locked myself away in my studio and worked on this project full-time – basically for one straight year almost every day. I had done a few tool photographs a couple years before, but in 2020 I really dove into this project.

Q: How did you go about sourcing the tools to photograph?

It started out with just my dad’s tools and some of my own, but as I started posting some of the images on Facebook people started contacting me and saying stuff like, “Hey, my grandad left me this really cool wrench. Do you think you might like to photograph that for you tool project?” And of course I always said yes!

Planning my composition

I pick up the object I’m thinking about photographing and take a long look and see what it is that I like about it. Then I look around my studio at all the junk I’ve assembled and choose the most appropriate to use as background. I’ve collected old wood, bark, rusty metal, paper and a lot of different fabrics.

Then the rigging part comes in. How am I going to stand the object straight up? This involves anything from waxed string, wire, rope, dowels and putty. I retouch out the string or wire – or whatever is holding the object up – in post-production.

Perhaps the key for me in this project is the lighting. I can spend several hours adjusting my spotlights, attempting to bring out the form, shape, texture and patina of the objects. Sometimes just moving the light two inches can change the whole look of the final composition. Since I work alone, there is a lot of back and forth between camera and the lights. I adjust the intensity of the lights using scrims inserted right in front of the light’s Fresnel lens. The direction of these lights is controlled by using barn doors attached to the front of each lighting unit, or I also sometimes use a couple of home-made light modifiers attached to a mini boom arm.

Above: Sicilian triangles. EOS 5D Mark IV, EF 70-200mm f2.8L USM lens at 180mm, 1/8 second at f16, ISO 400.

About Glen

During the past two decades, Glen has had over 70 solo and 50 group exhibitions in the US and Europe. His work can be seen in private collections and many museums, including the Polaroid Collection, Virginia’s Taubman Museum of Art and Chrysler Museum of Art. Glen is known for his disarmingly direct portraits of people and his moody, elemental Irish landscapes.