One of Us

How a New Jersey kid with long curly hair and a Nikon got backstage to the rodeo

The smell of sweat, adrenaline, and horseshit drenched the Nevada night. “Hey Custer!” shouted one of the cowboys. I turned around and they were looking at me, my long blonde curly hair spilling out from under my cowboy hat. They told me that if I was going to shoot backstage, I had to look the part — Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, western belt buckle, western shirt, cowboy hat. “You’re one of us, or not.”

Rodeo at the Nevada State Fair in Reno. Shot in the mid-1980s while the author was on assignment for Wrangler.

I was on assignment for Wrangler shooting a rodeo. The cowboys invited me into the chutes where they were getting ready to ride. It was a first-person view of man and horse, a lifestyle opposite of my New Jersey upbringing.

The chutes were the epicenter of the event, where contestants taped their hands, adjusted their jeans, and readied themselves for the prize ride. “Hey, watch out!” shouted a cowboy as a horse reared ten feet above my head, another cowboy jumping up on the rails to bring the animal back into the stall.

In the chutes at the Nevada State Fair rodeo. Shot with a Nikon on Kodak Tri-X film.

I was photographing into the arena when the arena photographer’s flash fired at the exact same split second as my 1/250th shutter. That impossible collaboration of light added an eerie, otherworldly light to the scene. I couldn’t have planned it better.

“You been to the rodeo?” I slurred to the two absolutely stoned guys guys holding up the other wall of the hotel elevator, me leaning against the wood-grained panels, proudly looking down at my dusty cowboy boots. I figured a few rounds at the bar and a few pulls on the slot machine were well deserved after surviving the rodeo. “Yep, been to the rodeo,” one of them said. Turned out they were the rodeo — the clowns, the guys in the barrels, waving the red bandanas, drawing the bulls away from fallen cowboys. I thought to myself: you guys have absolutely earned that.