Every July, gray-haired bearded old men come to Key West, Florida to drink, fish, arm wrestle, run with the bulls and read Hemingway in order to be crowned Best Hemingway by the Hemingway Look-Alike Society. It is very official.
Photographer Henry Hargreaves‘s project Becoming Hemingway recreate an iconic Hemingway portrait by Yousef Karsh from 1957. It’s very deep:
I told each sitter about the original shoot with Karsh: how Hemingway just returned from Africa and a terrible plane crash and was in agony; asked them to contemplate the amazing amount of pain he was in but the equally amazing focus he had to sit quietly for a portrait.
Everything came together to take them to a place of pure expression: being Hemingway, inhabiting him; looking like, even feeling like The Man himself. Just what I was after.
Here are this year’s Hemingways. It’s very intense. (Photos: Henry Hargreaves/Peta Pixel)
