Underneath their pretty makeup, curled hair and sparkling costumes, the trick riders have bruised and muscular bodies. Although they make their horseback tricks at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo seem easy and elegant, mishaps happen daily during practice. Photographer Laura Wilson captures this singular courage and independence, and the many layers of people like this, in her exhibit, That Day: Pictures in the American West at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, which will be on view through Feb. 14, 2016.
"I took these pictures of the West over a 35-year period. I am drawn to people who live in an enclosed world," Wilson said.
She brings to light the variety of communities of the American West and links human nature across the spectrum while rejecting the romantic American ideal of our country as a melting pot. Subjects like the Hutterites, trick riders, cowboys, six-man football teams and cock fighters coexist with few transactions with others.
"I don't mean to say one way of life is better than another but merely to say that my wish, as Eudora Welty wrote, "would be not to point a finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight,"" Laura Wilson said in a talk at the museum, Oct. 1. It is something she wrote down years ago.
Her career started before she was the famous portrait photographer Richard Avedon's assistant more than 30 years ago. When the Amon Carter commissioned Avedon to take portraits in the American West, Wilson was the gentle and charming soul who coaxed subjects to sit for Avedon. But as a mentor, he reinforced her already innate skills to connect with subjects she photographs. She also remembers a self-portrait she completed long before she worked with Avedon that "presaged" her latter work over the years. She had déjàs vu when she saw one he completed that was similarly as unforgiving as hers.
"They are both romantics of the American West. He [Avedon] focused on the person. She is more interested in the broader encounter. The detail in the print is less important to her than the general ambiance," John Rohrbach, Amon Carter Museum of American Art's senior curator of photographs, said.
How Wilson decides who she will photograph depends on the person's face. She said Avedon reinforced her choice of the subject who must be able to "hold the wall."
"I think it is looking for the truth of a person. It is the face that reveals something about life and living that interests me. It isn't the generally accepted person who is handsome or beautiful. It is the person's face that reveals something about the complexity of human beings," Wilson said.
On an afternoon in early October, a few security guards and docents at the museum prepared for an evening of tours after Laura Wilson spoke. They discussed the faces in the exhibit and which ones they thought are the most powerful. Each had a different face that grabbed them and pulled them into the encounter. Not one agrees on the same photograph.
"I think we learn about ourselves by looking at people who are different. By seeing different lifestyles and cultures confirms other existences and other ways of living. If we are open to that variety, we may get fresh ideas of how we are to live ourselves," Rohrbach said.
Wilson feels at home at the Amon Carter. She first saw the museum in 1966 as a young woman and has a "strong sense of nostalgia" when she steps on that porch on the hill and looks at the view of downtown.
"I really love the Amon Carter - its location, its architecture and working with John Rohrbach and Andrew Walker," Wilson said.
