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Off-camera with American West-inspired photographer and cowgirl Constance Jaeggi.
Written by Jenn Thornton
“It’s always an exploration,” says photographer Constance Jaeggi of her work as one of this generation’s most thoughtful visual storytellers. Her images are raw and immersive, capturing a beautiful if not slightly unsettling immediacy. She puts viewers thatclose to her subject. “I’m not after creating a technically perfectly executed image,” Constance confesses. Those can be “stale” and with digital technologies, “easy to make.” Not for this auteur. “I’m after a feeling,” she clarifies. Emotion. “I like my camera to work as an extension of myself—to be intuitive.”
Born in the UK and bred in Switzerland, Constance is mostly Stateside these days, splitting her time between Texas and Colorado. It is not, however, her first rodeo in this country. She initially came to Texas for college and to pursue a competitive horse-riding career. For Constance, having a foot in different worlds is in part, she shares, a way to satiate her “never-ending curiosity” and need to learn and evolve. “At times, I envy people who are able to focus on one thing and stay put,” says Constance, whose focus as a photographer is nonetheless award-winning. “I have a lot of interests and a lot of balls in the air. I suppose that’s also what keeps me going and inspired.”
The one constant in Constance’s life is horses. “My relationship with horses has been fundamental to my growth as a person, especially in my formative years,” says the lady who, ironically, was not raised around horses or animals at all not even in a rural setting. “We grew up in a suburb.” And yet, she adds, “I’ve been obsessed with horses for as long as I can remember and, for whatever reason, followed that dream all the way to Texas to build a life around my passion for horses.”
That obsession continues to influence how Constance the photographer sees things. “My competitive riding career exposed me to a different way of life,” she says. “My first few years in the U.S., I traveled around the country in a way that most Europeans visiting don’t”—namely with horses and her “horse family” in pursuit of a world championship title. That meant a lot of time on the road, staying in motels and trailers, and caring for the animals. “I saw parts of ‘rural’ and ‘small-town’ America I would have never known existed had it not been for the sport I was partaking in,” she continues. “I’m grateful for those experiences; they opened my eyes and ears, and most certainly still inform my work today.”
My relationship with horses has been fundamental to my growth as a person, especially in my formative years.
Constance Jaeggi
Her work includes The Devils, which she shot over two years. “I was living in the UK studying for my masters”—in Art History and Art World Practice— “and Covid happened,” Constance shares of the project’s unlikely origins. “I found myself in lockdown in the British countryside spending a lot of time at a stud farm called The Devil’s Horsemen, which supplies horses and stunt men and women to the film industry.” Her experience, however, was anything but “Hollywood, glamour, and fame.” “Underneath the exciting notion of ‘Hollywood horses,’ there were real people, with varied experiences of life, some with difficult backgrounds,” Constance explains. “Like many during this time, I was struggling, and I realized that this place acted as a refuge in many ways for the people I was photographing.” The result is a deeply personal work—literally, her photographic memories of a strange and uncertain time.
Along with an exhibition of The Devils held at the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, TX (the city is also home to John Wayne: An American Experience at the Stockyards), the project showed internationally, as well. In March 2024, Constance is returning to the NCMHOF with a fresh collection of portraits, this time featuring U.S.-based escaramuza teams, with accompanying poems by 2023 Texas Poet Laureate Ire’ne Lara Silva and award-winning educator, poet, and writing project fellow at UCLA, Angelina Sáenz.
With “an unexplainable need to make,” Constance has found—like so many seekers and dreamers and doers before her—possibility and opportunity to flourish in the unbound American West. “Romantic ideas around the cowboy life were a draw for me,” says the suburban girl who followed her heart for horses to wide-open spaces where dreams run wild. “I love the freedom I have here.”
Photographs © Constance Jaeggi
