Glen Wexler: Bovine Fancies
“Glen is a seven-foot Scotsman with a wooden leg whom I met Frog Rolling on an Eskimo trip in Northern Greenland. We were sheltering in a sauna at a local bordello with an Icelandic babe called Splut.”
— Eric Idle, Foreword to “The Secret Life of Cows”
Who better than comedian Eric Idle, of Monty Python and Spamalot fame, to introduce Glen Wexler’s zany photographic reverie, “The Secret Life of Cows”? After all, Idle knows a thing or two about cows: in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” French knights use a trebuchet to launch a cow over a castle wall.
Photo by Carsten Steinhausen / © Glen Wexler Studio
Idle didn’t stress over the task. “Let’s face it,” says Idle. “If you don’t find these pictures funny on first sight, no amount of forewords will persuade you otherwise.”
The book is funny — and gorgeously produced. But before he became a cowhand, Wexler earned his chops as one of the most inventive photographer-artists of his day. He created hundreds of album cover images for music legends like Quincy Jones and memorable print campaigns for advertising clients including Maxell and Sony.
His Hollywood Media District studio, which is powered by a slew of Macs, ramps up to a team of dozens (set crew, digital capture techs, stylists, prop and model makers) as commissions for CD covers, ad images, and book and gallery projects demand.
So how did a photo wiz like Wexler end up doing a book about…cows?
It all started with the Chick-fil-A calendar. That’s no gal-of-the-month pinup, but the annual marketing piece of a 1300-restaurant chain specializing in poultry. Explains Wexler with a chuckle, “The ad agency developed this campaign in which cows protect their species by advocating that people eat chicken — instead of them.”
The hugely popular promotion featuring cows in fanciful garb had a six-year history when Wexler was hired for the 2004 cow-as-superhero calendar. In Wexler’s hands, each gussied-up Bessie and Daisy became a richly conceived set piece. The project was a winner, and in 2005 he was brought back to do a cow-as-secret agent calendar that proved an even bigger hit — the company sold 2.3 million copies, or twice as many as the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar.
No Impossible Images
Wexler’s pictures take the viewer deep into a make-believe world that looks real. “I’ve always had this notion that there’s no such thing as an impossible image,” muses Wexler. “That’s what drives me to create these credible, hyper-real, and surrealistic photographic narratives that go somewhere unexpected.”
There’s no question Wexler is a pro at conjuring fantasy worlds. But that’s not the only thing that distinguished his Chick-fil-A calendars. He also credits their white-hot sales to his sophisticated Mac-based studio and post techniques. “The project is appealing to people because the images are fun and the production values are high,” he says. “That’s what Apple enabled us to achieve.”
In fact, the calendar was so successful it took on a life of its own. Says Wexler, “My personal challenge and inspiration lies in transcending the commercial intent. In the end, it’s all about the image: Does it hold its own beyond the intent of the marketing?”
And Now, The Book
Indeed it did. Wexler’s high-concept ruminants earned industry recognition and ultimately attracted the attention of New Zealand publisher PQ Blackwell, which invited him to make cows the subject of his first book.
“The Secret Life of Cows” features bovines whose capabilities know no bounds: they can rocket into space, plunge undersea, and impersonate the Fab Four (the “Meet the Beefles” image winks at Wexler’s album covers).
The book represents more than $1 million in production costs, 50 days of photography, and 600 hours in post. To create his elaborate effects Wexler even drew on top-drawer Hollywood talent such as Emmy Award-winning production designer Anthony Tremblay, Muppet costumer James Hayes, and “Independence Day” pyrotechnician Joe Viskocil.
Reverse Engineering
Wexler begins by pre-visualizing the finished piece. He then reverse-engineers its components. He works out each particular of set and composition, breaking down his “impossible photos” into a series of manageable elements, then fitting them back together in Photoshop.
Wexler’s photos are built with a smorgasbord of materials, from Sculpey modeling clay to actual hooves (dead) and cows (live), though the latter only sparingly. “Some of the other photographers used real cows dressed in costumes for the entire project,” he recalls disbelievingly. “I thought about doing that — for about a nanosecond. Because even well-trained Hollywood cows are not that cooperative. And their bodily functions are totally unpredictable.”
Instead, Wexler hired a sculptor to create a lifelike 1/3-scale plaster, clay, and armature-wire animal. From this model he made a herd of hard-foam castings. These were sliced, diced, repositioned, resurfaced, and costumed to make the characters that inhabited his intricate miniature sets. “We went through a lot of foam cows because they got all chopped up,” Wexler says with a laugh.
