THE HOURGLASS

“The title ‘Fool’s Gold’ just came to me, and it became the driving force of everything,” says the photographer Jesse Chehak, explaining the idea behind the series of photographs he spent a decade working on. Chehak was drawn to the landscapes of the American West, where he grew up, after nearly ten years in New York. “I had this longing to go back West, to re-approach it with this new experience of living on the East Coast,” says Chehak, whose work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and T: The New York Times Style Magazine. “I got really obsessed with it. In August, when everything is really slow in magazines, I would take these long, wandering road trips and I’d just make pictures.”

Chehak, a native of Los Angeles, began to revisit historic places, establishing a metaphorical connection between the rush for gold and the more contemporary rush for the new image. “I wanted to act as a prospector,” he says. “To really try to embody my ancestors in the West and to think about not just what it was like to traverse an unknown landscape, but to be searching for something new. Instead of prospecting for gold, I am prospecting for the next photograph.”

For Whisper Editions, Chehak has made available an exclusive print from this exceptional body of work. The photograph depicts the back of the Hollywood sign, which is located in the very neighborhood where Chehak grew up. The photograph was taken while Chehak was on location for a job; since September 11, security around the Hollywood sign has grown tight, making it difficult to get near. Thanks to the other shoot, Chehak had a permit to be in the area. He climbed up behind the sign to get the photograph. “It was kind of opportunistic, which is directly in line with the thinking behind the book, so it was this beautiful moment,” Chehak says. “It’s the keystone image of the series.”