Valentine & Beyond

About the Photographs

The photographs presented in Valentine & Beyond were first made in the small West Texas town of Valentine. This is an unforgiving hardscrabble area that can take much and likes to give little. Raising cattle in this area of scarce forage and stingy rainfall requires a lot of land per head and loads of hard work by dedicated people who know the land and how mean it can get. I generally photograph to gain insight into what I’m taking pictures of with a belief that things keenly observed may be better understood. I photographed these images working to put together an exhibition with a dear friend who was born and grew up in Texas. The exhibition was titled SaddleUp and had its first showing in 2019 at the Texas State Capitol. From there, it traveled to multiple venues about the state. Regarding the images themselves, the hand-held photographs (cowboys — and every here and there a cowgirl — pushing cattle, working in the pens branding, a woman searching for a lost heifer) provide a look at the rough beauty of place, culture, and people. The formal portraits are intended to pay tribute to their subjects by creating visual records of these strong souls. The portraits are made on 8x10 inch film using a view camera with its accordion bellows and focusing cloth draped over photographer and ground glass. There’s something akin to ritual in fixing to film the delicate images projected to the ground glass of that big camera. One of the many magical things about photography is its ability to show us something from the past. I hope these images provide some monument to those who posed for the camera. We don’t stick around long, and we get old fast. Nice to see images of such strength and beauty preserved.