“Holiday Gift Guide 2024: Illustrated & Art Books. More than 150 animal portraits shot against neutral backgrounds highlight their subjects’ personalities, whether it’s the skeptical expression shared on facing pages by Hawk, a llama, and Octavius, a Barbados blackbelly sheep, or the tough-guy mien of flamboyantly feathered Blaze, a buff laced Polish rooster. Name-and-species captions accompany the images; in the index, Ford expands on his experiences with each animal. (He writes of border collie Gunner: ‘His senses were sharp, his focus was intent, and his drive to fly from his seat was constant.’).” — Publishers Weekly
“From buck-toothed alpacas to chickens so pretty they should have cosmetics contracts, the subjects in Farm Life: A Collection of Animal Portraits are hardly the stuff of Old McDonald. With his charmingly elevated portraits, the photographer Randal Ford makes them all look like barnyard superstars.” — The New York Times Holiday Gift Guide
"In Bug the baby longhorn, [Ford] discovered a budding supermodel. The lanky calf, photographed when he was just days old, is a natural beauty, with his lustrous speckled coat and wide-set eyes. But it’s clearly Ford’s art-directing alchemy that elevates him from barn dweller to heartbreaker, as he turns toward the camera with his long lashes, one foot gingerly posed in front of the other. Photos of Bug are among more than 200 images in Ford’s latest book, Farm Life: A Collection of Animal Portraits, published by Rizzoli. His third monograph with the publisher — following Good Dog (2020) and The Animal Kingdom (2018) — Farm Life includes portraits of goats, pigs, llamas, chickens, ducks, rabbits, horses and a surprising variety of cows. Given that these nonhuman sitters (or standers) are harder to direct than human models, it’s remarkable just how still they appear, as if they are truly posing." — 1stDibs
“Award-winning Texas photographer Randal Ford has turned his lens on all manner of animals: pet dogs, chimpanzees, giraffes, and tigers, not to mention the Texas longhorn on G&G’s February/March 2024 cover. His latest book, Farm Life, follows his previous collections, Animal Kingdom and Good Dog, in elevating animal portraiture to a fine art. This time, he’s capturing the beauty, silliness, eccentricities, and elegance of farm animals—and not just any farm animals. Arabian horses, brown goats, rare Polish chickens, pigeons, and even a baby raccoon occupy shining moments on the pages. Ultimately, the book is a love letter to the working animals that bolster the heartlands of the country.” — Garden & Gun
“Ford’s third animal portraiture project captures the crisp profiles of residents of the American farm: cows, chickens, ducks, yaks, barn owls, and much more.” — The New York Times Book Review
"...these farm animals were photographed in the studio as supermodels. From Highland cows to Polish chickens to Arabian horses, Ford’s compelling animal photography invites us to fill with barnyard awe." — Hello Lovely Studio
