Exploring Rodeo, Masculinity Through Photography | National Geographic

(Western music)

(cow mooing)

– I’m a contributing photographer

to National Geographic Magazine.

I relentlessly want to understand things

and particularly things that are not part

of my sort of orbit of perception.

(twangy Western music)

(shouting)

I’m in Texas with the Hughes family seeing

what life is like here.

I’m interested in how boys learn to become men

in different parts of the world.

Certainly, a critical element of historic notions

of masculinity has been overcoming fear.

I have no idea how I’m going

to take the pictures of the bull riding.

I have no idea.

This story has an aspect of it

that is pretty unfamiliar to me,

which is kind of like sports photography.

I don’t use long lenses.

I don’t know how exactly I’m going to handle this thing

that happens, like, very quickly.

(shouting)

I don’t think I got it.

I don’t know, I thought all the elements,

you know, the halogen light, the wide open awkward space,

I thought it’d all be magic.

Sheesh.

Always, I’ve really strived

to explore larger subjects through individual stories.

So rodeo is a way in to something else.

A way in to looking at Rig, and Rowdy, and Ridge Hughes

and what their lives are like.

How are these boys growing up?

It’s a very different kind of experience

than I had growing up.

And that, I think, in a lot of ways,

is what propels me to be as curious

as I am about these things.

I want to understand things

outside of the world that shaped and informed my outlooks.

(galloping hoofbeats)

The actual act of photography, I think,

is fairly intuitive.

The pictures that I feel end up resonating the best

are pictures that were made in situations

where it’s like, I’m barely conscious of what’s happening.

(chattering)

Photos are imbued with a lot,

and they’re shaped and determined

by where the photographer stands

and the moment that the photographer chooses.

And that’s a lot of responsibility,

because as a photographer,

you choose, bam!

(Western music)

– [Mrs. Hughes] Good job baby, good job.

– [Pete] I think the image

that a lot of people have in their mind

of ranch life in this part of Texas is hats and horses.

But Kelly and Flint, I think, are presenting their sons

with a pretty dynamic set of learning experiences

as boys and young men.