"Where The Buffalo Roam" by David Yarrow was taken at Woody Creek Tavern in November. A live buffalo was brought into the restaurant one afternoon for the shoot.
"Menace," said photographer David Yarrow from behind the lens of his camera. "Menace right at me."
Positioned across from him around the Hotel Jerome J Bar is a Native American chief, a man in a tophat and eye-patch and fierce western patrons, led by model Cara Delevingne and actor Gerard Butler as the center subjects. There's a wolf-like dog walking atop the bar between them.
It was on the set of Yarrow's photoshoot in Aspen this past November. A blizzard blanketed the streets outside that morning, town was quiet, and the J Bar had gone back in time - transformed into a 19th century saloon, loosely governed and spirited by the gritty characters who define wild-western lore.
The scene was matched with cigar smoke and whiskey, and Waylon Jennings songs playing on a speaker in the background.
Yarrow was working to tell a story that morning. And watching him work within the historic setting of the Hotel Jerome bar, the photographer was seemingly at ease in his process, as was his crew and his cast of storybook characters.
Menacing, they looked, and Yarrow's camera clicked. "This is the money shot," he said, capturing a moment that would become central to his telling of Aspen's stories.
Titled "Aspen Has Fallen," the photograph taken... in November... is among a few select new images included in Yarrow's current show... titled "The Wild West | Aspen."
The photographer conducted his first-ever photoshoot in Aspen last March. In a single day, which happened to be Saint Patrick's Day, Yarrow set his stories at two iconic locations in the area: Woody Creek Tavern and Cloud Nine.
Following the initial shoot, which featured celebrity models and fell under the theme of 1970s ski vibe meets Aspen glamor, Yarrow returned in November to bring out another side of this place through his imagery.
"There's so many stories to tell in Aspen, because it's got such a history of good behavior and bad behavior and so many landmark destinations," Yarrow said. "And so I just thought that we could tell some more stories."
For his November photoshoot, Yarrow called upon Cara Delevingne - who is often featured in Yarrow's work - and Gerard Butler to be the lead archetypes of his wild west, Aspen narrative. Though he's photographed Delevingne many times, it was the first time for Yarrow to work with Butler for one of his shoots, he noted.
"If you've got leads as strong as Cara and Gery facially, it's hard not to take a good picture," Yarrow said. "And we just made sure that everything was styled back in time, because that bar goes back a long way."
They first shot at the J Bar and then headed to Woody Creek Tavern, where Yarrow added a buffalo into the cast of characters this time around. The photographer also incorporates local people in his Aspen shoots, he said, including the man he cast as Hunter S. Thompson - who can be seen in a couple of the final images in Yarrow's Aspen collection.
Yarrow returned again in January for his third Aspen photoshoot, during which he said he took some "spontaneous shots" outside of the Hotel Jerome and in the gondola and other places that overlook town. These images from January... were very much styled to again portray the 1970s-ski vibe that was first explored last year, Yarrow said.
"The thing I'd say about Aspen is it sits in two silos, it sits in the silo of glamorous ski resort and it sits in the silo of former mining," Yarrow said. "So you've got two totally different narratives, and you've got to make damn sure that your styling per shot is playing the narrative you're playing to."
From the menacing tales of the wild west to the stories of the freewheeling '70s, Yarrow said he believes that both narratives work and that there's a market for this Aspen imagery, so long as it's "not too earnest," he said.
"We want to be playful," Yarrow said. "We're not here to tell the truth; we're here to tell stories."
