Hanging from the coat hooks behind the front door of Jane Hilton’s North London home is an array of Stetsons; at the base, where you might have expected a row of wellingtons or trainers, there are finely tooled and decoratively stitched cowboy boots.
As the photographer and documentary-maker leads us through the sitting room, past the adobe-style fireplace with a cured cow hide stretched across its hearth, the penny – or should that be the dime? – begins to drop. In her cluttered study Hilton has been checking the proofs of her latest project, Precious, a collection of striking, almost classical portraits of “working girls” from Nevada’s legal brothels. Flicking through her book Dead Eagle Trail, about the cowboys and landscapes of Arizona