The bare-handed beekeeper who looks like something out of The Odyssey: Holly Lynton’s best photograph

‘Les didn’t wear gloves as he needed to be able to feel the bees so he didn’t crush them. “Should I put them on my face? ” he said. “Sure! ” I replied’ The jumping-off point for my Bare Handed series was a bird becoming trapped in the netting around the raspberry bushes in my backyard. It made me think of the problem humans have interacting with the natural world.

How do we navigate obtaining food and the other things we need while still being good stewards of the land? I’d seen work by photographers demonstrating how Big Agriculture was destroying the environment. I wanted to find people who took a respectful approach, tried to work in tandem with it, but who might be in a fearful or dangerous situation. I approached Les, the man in this picture, after speaking to the director of an exhibition space in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had hired him to remove a feral beehive from…