With this shot, Academy of Art University student Sean Dufrene captured his 71-year-old father, Jack, in all his surreal, Coors-guzzling glory. “This photo isn’t far from reality,” says Dufrene. “My dad’s kind of a cowboy.” The shot is part of a series on his father that is at once beautifully composed, hilarious and tender. (Other images have him wearing a beer-can tool belt and dining with his cat.) Dufrene initially planned to shoot his dad in a documentary style, à la Richard Avedon, but then realized Jack warranted a more outrageous approach. As for his model, Dufrene says, “Before every shoot, he’d grumble about it, but whenever I submitted a shot in class, he would be the first one calling me, asking, ‘So, what did they think?’”
