The Winner Takes it All
Wellington, Florida, 2025

In Wellington, Florida - the equestrian
world’s winter playground - polo may
attract the Ralph Lauren crowd and
the lead Palm Beach socialites, but
showjumping is where the money is. It
is a serious business in which the lead
horses sell for many millions of dollars
and the lead jumpers have celebrity
status. This is not a hobby; show jumpers
may be collegiate, but there is rivalry and
competition at every level in Wellington.
The lead events are well attended, often
televised, and an occasion in themselves.
My preconception for this shot was that
it should have an emphatic sense of place,
but also a sense of occasion. There was
always going to be three layers to the
story: the foreground, which would lean
on parody; the middle ground which
would highlight the height defying skills
of the horse and jumper and then a final
layer of the crowd and the palm trees to
add contextual narrative. We are well
versed in using space in this manner, but
this was a greedy concept. I needed to fit
a great deal in for the story to work.
There were so many people involved in
making this tableau work. Firstly, the
European supermodels - Frida Aasen
from Norway and Nadine Leopold
from Austria - then the owners of the
wonderful Austin-Healey car who
brought it from Arizona all the way to the
Atlantic Coast of Florida and finally the
crowd who participated in the production
in the most committed of ways; without
their involvement there was no picture.
Most of all, I want to thank Ken and
Emily Smith for access to their stunning
facilities in Wellington and, of course,
their son Spencer Smith - a world class
showjumper - for lending his skill to this
production.