» L7 Interview/competition: photographer Jane Hilton on cowboys
Award-winning photographer Jane Hilton spent four years documenting the life of the 21st century cowboy… and talking her way into their bedrooms. She tells Bella Todd about uncovering a sensitive side to this enduring icon of American culture
How did your fascination with cowboys start?
I was brought up with ‘70s Westerns, watching TV on Saturday afternoons, and later I worked in the West and got to know it really well. Occasionally I’d come across the odd cowboy or adrenaline-fuelled bull-rider. One time, I was diverted up to Cortez, Colorado by The Times. They said ‘Could you go and photograph this young cowboy, Jeremiah Karsten, who’s just ridden across the United States on a horse?’ I think it was a crossroads in his life, his parents had just divorced, he was partying too much… He had a string of eight or nine colts behind him as he rode, and would break them in as he went. He was 17 when he started and 19-and-a-half when he got to Mexico.
Jeremiah Karsten, Cowboy, Cortez, Colorado 2006
What’s the enduring appeal of the cowboy?
They are very iconic. They stand for a lifestyle that is very different. They’re outside all the time, closer to God and nature and earth than us running around Brighton or London all the time. Tracking them down is very difficult because, although they all have cell phones now, they don’t normally get a signal!
Why did you want to photograph the cowboys in their bedrooms?
The cowboy spends almost his entire life not at home. They don’t like being at home, and they spend hardly any time in bed. I wanted to capture them out of context. One in particular, Pate Meinzer, sits on a bed with pink curtains in the back and a ‘LOVE’ sign and a cushion with the date he was married on! The big surprise to me was that they did care about their homes, but that they’d almost dragged the outside inside. One cowboy, a John Wayne fanatic called Allan Randolph, had all these stuffed animals. He couldn’t get this elk head through the door so he put it through the window and hung his hat from it! There’s a lot of almost ‘folk art’, if you like. They collect things obsessively – stuffed animals, spurs, horses’ bits – and I felt that I collected them.
Pate Meinzer, Cowboy, Benjamin, Texas
How did the cowboys react to your project?
A lot of them were bemused by it. A: they’re not interested in photography, and B: they couldn’t understand why they would be interesting. And, if anything, they all wanted to be photographed going off into the sunset with a horse, which is what I was avoiding. But they were respectful, and curious. The youngest cowboy had never had his photograph taken and was painfully shy. The oldest cowboy I met was probably Boots O’Neal, who was 77 and wanted to hear about all the ranches I’d visited.
Allan Randolph, Gun Collector, Beulah, Colorado 2006
Is there a cowboy code of honour that crosses generations?
Cowboy etiquette I think you could call it. It’s unspoken. I think they’re terribly polite. They’re very Christian. All the young cowboys have had their fair share of going into town and getting plastered. But I think the macho thing is a complete myth. I mean, hurtling along on a horse with a lasso, yeh, I suppose that’s quite macho. But to watch a cowboy bottle-feeding baby calves and carrying them in his arms…
You’ve worked in fashion photography. To what extent is being a cowboy about having the right clobber?
They all have a hat and a belt buckle, without fail. The younger ones all wear cowboy boots but as they get older, in their 70s, they’ll wear softer shoes. They like wearing their hats. But of course, it shatters all dreams when they take them off. They don’t do that often but they will take them off at mealtimes. And when they do it’s not good. Their hair’s all squashed and they’ve got a tan line across their forehead! Some will wear one hat until it dies.
Bob Yates, Cowboy, Arriloa, Colorado 2007
Some of the photographs – Bob Yates standing on his porch in the snow – are very melancholic. There’s a sense of heroes out of time…
I hope to God cowboys never die out but it’s definitely diminished. New technologies, the prices of gas and feed going up: they’re struggling like so many other businesses. And they’re aware that, every time they come to town, the town has got bigger. But they say that, while people want beef, they will always be around. Because you cannot rear and breed and supply beef to people without getting on a horse.
Dead Eagle Trail is at Crane Kalman, Kensington Gardens, until 29 August, 01273 697096,
www.cranekalmanbrighton.com
COMPETITION
Dead Eagle Trail by Jane Hilton has just been published as a book by Schilt Publishing, and will be on sale at Crane Kalman. We have four copies (RRP £32.50) to give away. To be in with a chance, email competitions@thelatest.co.uk, subject ‘Dead Eagle Trail’ by 2 August and tell us:
Q Which famous cowboy had a horse called Dollar (which, incidentally, was sold to him by one of Hilton’s subjects)?
