Mary Ellen MarkCraig Scarmardo and Cheyloh Mather at the Boerne Rodeo (1991) Photograph

“In the summer of 1991 Texas Monthly invited internationally celebrated photographer Mary Ellen Mark to chronicle small-town Texas rodeo life. Mark, a New Yorker, has long been fascinated with photographing small‑scale, family‑run circuses all over the world, and the rodeo ‑with its pageantry, daredevilry, animals, and clowns‑ is the Texas equivalent. In a single month she trav­eled to rodeos in a dozen towns, including Big Spring, Boerne, Leakey, Pecos, and Sanderson. Her outsider's eye helped produce one of the magazine's most talked-about and controversial photo essays. Instead of focusing solely on archetypal action scenes ‑bronc busters and bull riders‑ she aimed her camera at the crowds who turn out for the rodeos and the townspeople who participate in the attendant pa­rades and sideshows. Some readers criticized Mark for depicting so many grim, solemn‑looking people, but what others saw in the photographs was a fierce, unyielding pride. Although in late‑twentieth‑century Texas, small‑town residents have about as much contact with cowboy life as city slickers do, the annual rodeo gives them a chance to celebrate the fading pioneer qualities of independence and individualism. By focusing on the social whirl as well as the arena festivities, Mark captured the heart of a community determined to hold on to its heritage.” - Skip Hollandsworth