BUFFALO 95227

Buffalo 95227 is a photographic exploration into ‘a day in the life’ at my in-law’s ranch in Clements, California. The bucolic setting in the rolling Sierra Nevada Foothills is home to a working ranch, chock full of rusting and obsolete machine-made items that are slowly decaying and going back to nature, a location truly having all the trappings of a forgotten aspect of California’s historical roots.

This idyllic ‘ranch life’ scene is greatly enhanced by a thriving and ever growing herd of domestic water buffalo. These beautiful animals punctuate the landscape and are now almost more numerous than the grand and majestic oaks that dot the expansive landscape they roam. It started years ago as my father in-law John’s wholehearted and ambitious idea to become a boutique cheese maker, raising them for production of the much sought after Mozzarella di Bufala cheese. Sadly, that ship has now long sailed. He is aging and the herd has grown in excess of seventy, now a tremendous task to manage, both physically and financially. All the buffalo have names, such as The General, Cinque, Dave, etc. In livestock economics, animals are products and have numbers to differentiate them, never names. The reality: his love and passion for “his pets” has become an out-of control hobby, not a business, with its demands and obligations now requiring the attention and resources of family from afar.

My intention with this photographic exploration is that the viewer not necessarily extract this specific narrative from this documentary series, rather it communicates how my father in-law John is as much a partof this landscape as the landscape is of him.