Field of Vision - Quintessential Barrington Magazine

The Arts
by Jeffrey Westhoff | Photos Courtesy of Robert McGinley
Looking west over Horizon Farms
Field of Vision
hotographic artist Robert McGinley’s favorite subject is
the horizon. “When you are shooting a horizon, you have this experience
of continual travel, of continual momentum into deep space,”
says the Barrington Hills native. “The horizon represents a place of rest and
the beginning of infinity.”
The horizon is an intersection of many things, of the land and the sky, of
today and tomorrow, of the world and its potential. A decade ago, McGinley’s
life and art intersected at Horizon Farms, the 421-acre equestrian property
that his parents, Jane and William McGinley, established nearly 30 years ago.
For a time, it was one of the biggest thoroughbred breeding farms in Illinois,
boarding up to 150 horses. Thirty miles of fence lined the property. “It was a
very large operation,” McGinley says.
Robert McGinley, who was 30 when his parents bought the farm on Algonquin
Road west of Route 59, stood on the property with his father shortly
after the purchase in 1983 and admired the view. “The horizon goes on forever,”
McGinley said. “Horizon,” his father replied, “Horizons Farms.” The
name stuck.
McGinley became interested in photography while a student at Barrington
High School. He attended the famed California Institute of the Arts
to develop his interest in photography, as well as writing and sculpture. After
one of the barns at Horizon Farms
graduation, he remained on the West Coast to pursue a career in the arts. He
wrote and directed “Jimmy Zip”, a film that won the best dramatic feature
award in 1999 at the Hollywood Film Festival. But in December 2000, Mc-
Ginley received a phone call that led him to redirect his passion and pursue
landscape photography to promote land preservation and conservation.
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The call was from his father, who was ill and
asked him to come home to help with the farm.
William McGinley died the following month.
As McGinley assumed management duties, he
and his two siblings began to realize they would
not be able to operate the massive farm as their
parents had. They worried that if they sold the
farm, developers would carve it up into 5-acre
parcels and build as many as 80 homes. “When
Dad passed away, there were a lot of calls from
developers,” McGinley says, adding that those
calls upset his mother.
The family looked into strategies that would
guarantee Horizon Farms would remain open
land and that its wildlife and wetlands would be
protected. While doing this research, McGinley
learned of conservation easements. A conservation
easement allows a landowner to designate
how the property will be used no matter who
holds the deed in the future. Once the conservation
easement is drawn up, the landowner enters
into a legal agreement with a qualified, nonprofit
conservation organization, usually a land trust, or
a public agency that will monitor the land and enforce
the guidelines.
McGinley stresses that the landowner decides
the rules of a conservation easement, not the trust
that will administer those rules. “You are designing
the future for your heirs, the people coming
behind you,” he says. “You’re committing yourself
to land preservation in perpetuity.”
When Jane McGinley died in February 2003,
her children stepped up their efforts to create a
conservation easement that would maintain Horizon
Farms as an open space. The agreement was
completed in the fall of that year, with the easement
jointly controlled by the Naperville-based Conservation
Foundation and the Barrington Area Conservation
Trust, which was founded in 2001.
Karen Yancey, executive director of the Barrington
Area Conservation Trust, says McGinley’s
faith in the fledgling organization helped it
to grow. “Robert is one of our favorite people,” she
says, “because he had the courage and tenacity to
see through the creation of an easement of that
size.” At more than 400 acres, the Horizon Farms
property is one of the largest, possibly the largest,
conservation easements in the state.
The McGinley family sold Horizon Farms at
auction in October 2006. The current owners have
maintained the property as a horse farm, which
was McGinley’s hope. He bought a 14-acre slice
of the farm, also part of the easement, to maintain
his family’s tie to the land.
McGinley now divides his time between Barrington
Hills and his home in Santa Monica,
where he is active in efforts to preserve the local
coastline. Although he says he has been shooting
landscapes “all my life,” he did not begin to photograph
Horizon Farms until he returned home
in 2001.
“It soon became an obsession,” he says. “It appealed
to my sense of connection to the land, to
nature.” Because McGinley returns to the Barrington
area once a month, he sees a new perspective
of the farm with every visit. “I was always
getting a fresh look at different weather and light
patterns,” he says. “I was fascinated by the way the
same location would change.”
One morning this summer,
photographers everywhere
grabbed their cameras
when these unusual cloud
formations arrived.
Robert McGinley noticed similar
images to his, found online
later that day from other parts
of the country.
As he continued to photograph the farm, his
connection to it deepened. He saw the landscape as
a natural work of art. “I found the experience of being
able to witness and photograph the farm a very
peaceful experience, and some ways spiritual, too.”
McGinley used his photography to build the
case for the conservation easement. “The first
step was being able to show trustees and attorneys
the importance of the land,” he says, “that
the land has aesthetic value that goes beyond just
development value.”
“Documentary-style” photographs helped to
prove that the property could support and preserve
wildlife and that it contained “view corridors”
that the public could see from the road
– two criteria needed for the IRS to approve the
easement. McGinley also included artistic photos
in the IRS submission. “It was hopefully able to
show the inspiration I get from the experience of
being on the farm.”
McGinley hopes that all viewers, not just IRS
agents, get a sense of that inspiration from his
art. “Being able to have a moment of tranquility
is something I hope the photographs can convey,”
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Left: Robert McGinley
he says. Many of his photographs will be
exhibited at La Citadelle Art Gallery at The
Arboretum of South Barrington, from Oct.
6 through Jan. 6, 2013 (see sidebar).
Yancey believes that McGinley’s love of
the land and his “conservation ethic” is visible
in his photography. “He’s been able to
translate that into his photography and his
art and, really, all aspects of his life.”
Yancey has also seen this in a photograph
that she once took on Horizon
Farms. During an annual visit to monitor
the land for the Barrington Area Conservation
Trust, Yancey saw a man on horseback
approaching from the distance. She raised
her camera to shoot the rider, realizing just
as she snapped the picture that it was Mc-
Ginley. It became her favorite image of the
man. “He looked so at peace with the land
around him, and all that he has done to preserve
it,” she says.
Robert McGinley
La Citadelle exhibit
hotographs by Barrington Hills native Robert McGinley will be
exhibited from Oct. 6 through Jan. 6, 2013, at La Citadelle Art Gallery.
McGinley will appear at an artist reception to mark the exhibition’s
opening and he will return to present an artist’s talk to discuss his approach
to landscape photography and how it can be used as a conservation
land tool (event details below).
The exhibition will feature photographs taken at Horizon Farms,
the Barrington Hills property McGinley’s family owned from 1983 until
2006. Other images were taken in the mountains of Utah, the great
plains of Georgia, and waterfronts in Ireland and Southern California.
“Robert’s photographs have a kind of serenity,” says Vesna Boscovic,
president of La Citadelle Art Gallery. “You can’t walk by Robert’s photography.
You have to stop and look.”
La Citadelle Art Gallery opened in early January with an aim to
promote the exchange of art and culture between North America and
Europe. Boscovic once operated a gallery with the same philosophy
in the Paris suburb, St. Germain. La Citadelle Art Gallery is a nonprofit
corporation that uses its proceeds to benefit artists on both continents.
For more information or to contact Robert McGinley, visit
www.robertmcginleyphotography.com or call 310-399-1768.
Event details:
“From DAWN ’til DUSK: Air, Water and Landscape Photography”
by Robert McGinley will be held at La Citadelle Art Gallery, located in Unit H-45
at The Arboretum of South Barrington. It runs from Oct. 6, 2012 to Jan. 6, 2013.
There is an opening reception with the artist on Sat., Oct. 6, at 7 p.m.
An artist’s talk by McGinley will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 8.
If a member of the Barrington Area Conservation Trust purchases
one of Robert McGinley’s pieces, proceeds (minus printing and framing costs)
can be designated to benefit the trust.
For more information on the event, contact Vesna Boscovic at
La Citadelle Art Gallery at 224-622-9578, email vesna.boscovic@gmail.com,
or visit www.lacitadelle.net.
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