00:31I released the first edition, and it felt like a nice bow on nearly a decade of work.
00:39That book came out, and my assumption was that the project was over, was that I was going to go
00:46on and shoot something else.
00:47But it kept going, and it intensified, really.
00:53I started doing my own rodeo and photographing there and spending time at more rodeos at a velocity like I
01:03had never done in any other previous year.
01:06So two years later, I looked up, and I had accumulated thousands of photos at people's ranches and homes.
01:15And the portraiture had gotten a lot more intimate and a lot closer to the subject.
01:20And I felt like, you know, this work deserves a place in the world as well.
01:26So I started to compile it into a book, and it felt similar.
01:31It felt like an extension or a sequel to the first book, but very different and a lot more urgent
01:37than the first one.
01:43Cowboying in America is more than just entertainment.
01:46It's more than storytelling.
01:49It's myth-building.
01:51It is essential to our identity as Americans.
01:58Resilience, grit, independence are core to our definition of self.
02:04But that Black people have been excluded from that icon, that Black people have been excluded from that story, keeps
02:12us from attributing those things to ourselves.
02:15It says, yes, Americans are gritty and resilient and independent, but Black people aren't those things because they're not included
02:24in this image.
02:26And realizing that that wasn't true, I decided to bust up that myth and to put out imagery and to
02:35put out film.
02:36So the next generation of Black folks in this country will have no doubt that they're absolutely under the umbrella
02:42of all of those noble traits that we attribute to ourselves.
02:54I saw a lot of inequality in this world.
02:59There were Black cowboys competing for a few hundred dollars that were doing the exact same events as white folks
03:09that were making tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to ride the same bulls and do the
03:15exact same events.
03:16So I decided that the best thing I could do to close that gap was to put on my own
03:21event and to give away $60,000 in prize money, which was money that these Black athletes had never seen
03:29before.
03:30It was a resounding success.
03:31Our first year, we had 2,000 people there.
03:34We gave out $60,000 in prize money.
03:37I saw athletes get new trucks, new trailers, get their pro cards, and stay on the road all summer doing
03:46what they love.
03:47And we just continue to grow and refine the rodeo and touch more lives and bring people under this umbrella,
03:57which I think is wildly important, especially now with the discourse in America.
04:02It's like, you're not going to tell us who we are, and you're not going to limit where we go.
04:08One of us is vulnerable.
04:117,000 of us in an arena is wildly powerful.
04:14So we're going to continue to gather.
04:16We're going to continue to collect and tell this story to as many people as possible.
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