Popular Photography Magazine

When James Quantz Jr.’s rep asked four of her photographers to each shoot a series featuring a vintage Airstream trailer, it was strictly promotional. “She wanted to show we interpreted concepts,” he says, adding that he has never taken a trip in an RV. “I imagined the things you might do with an Airstream, like camp or go fishing. And then I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to see gorillas doing them?”

Back in the film days, photographers had to learn through trial and error how to see the world in tones of gray rather than colors—pre-visualization. Black-and-white shooters would eventually build up an arsenal of specialty red, yellow, orange, green, and blue filters to help them alter the colors in a scene to specific tones of gray.

I first began work on my “Explosion” series in 2004. I’ve always been interested in the relationship between the real and the imagined, and I’ve noticed how eyewitnesses to extreme events with fires and explosions refer to them as “filmic” or “like a movie,” because they’re used to seeing these events so often in action films.