‘Les the bare-handed beekeeper asked if he should put them on his face. I said: Sure!’ Holly Lynton’s best photograph
‘Les didn’t wear gloves as he needed to be able to feel the bees so he didn’t crush them. He looks like something out of The Odyssey’ The jumping-off point for my Bare Handed series was a bird becoming trapped in the netting around the raspberry bushes in my backyard. It made me think of the problem humans have interacting with the natural world. How do we navigate obtaining food and the other things we need while…
Key points
- Holly Lynton photographed beekeeper Les handling bees without gloves over three days in New Mexico for her Bare Handed series.
- Les asked whether he should put the bees on his face, and Lynton agreed; he closed his eyes while she photographed.
- Lynton said the series focuses on people who work respectfully with nature and treat their work as a spiritual, meditative practice.
US photographer Holly Lynton has described how she came to make her image Bare Handed Les, Honeybees, part of a series about people who work closely with nature. The photograph shows beekeeper Les with bees on his face after he asked her whether he should put them there.
Lynton approached Les after speaking to the director of an exhibition space in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had hired him to remove a feral beehive from a tree. She worked with him over three days, first taking documentary pictures of him tending his hives.
The moment with the bees
On the third day, Les's apprentice Amber helped him take the queen bee from a cage in his shirt pocket. Amber placed the queen in Les's hand and the bees followed. Les then asked Lynton whether he should put them on his face, and she said yes.
Les moved his hands up slowly and closed his eyes for a few minutes while Lynton photographed. Bees avoid hair, so none went into his beard or the top of his head. Afterwards, he told her he could hear nothing but the buzzing.
Should I put them on my face?
— Les, the bare-handed beekeeper
Working without protection
Les did not wear gloves because he said he needed to feel the bees so he would not crush them, and it was too hot for a suit. Lynton wore a shirt buttoned tightly at the wrists and tried a beekeeper's veil, but gave it up because the mesh made it hard to focus. She said a bee buzzed in her ear and she had to walk away until it stopped.
Lynton used a medium-format analogue camera, and bees landed on her hands while she looked through the lens. She could feel them but not see them, which she found disconcerting. Les told her to move slowly, as he did, and she was not stung.
The wider series
Lynton said the themes of the project were reinforced when she photographed wolves with their trainers at a sanctuary and a family of catfish noodlers in rural Oklahoma, who catch fish with their bare hands. She said none of the people she photographed had any fear and all were experts, for whom the work was a spiritual, meditative practice.
