Queer rodeo royalty … Priscilla Toya Bouvier. We don’t have examples, really, in pop culture of people who are queer and living real lives and living their best life.”
“It’s like something bad has happened – it’s the Matthew Shepard story. “Usually when we hear about rural queerness it’s in a negative way,” he says. These are real lovers.”Ĭreating the pictures was a way for him to listen to people’s stories, to see their scars, to discover their beauty and contentment.
“Gay cowboys have long been fetishised in pornography, as in art, but this was completely authentic. “How often do you see something like that?” says Gilford.
In one particularly tender shot, a man in jeans and blue plaid rests his hand on his partner’s back, underneath the latter’s pale checkered shirt. There is a lot of skin: shirtless torsos, a man shot from behind wearing little more than tasselled green chaps, a naked couple on a horse. “We’re all from places that are still hostile to queerness.” Gay cowboys have long been fetishised but this was completely authentic. And Gilford was no outsider looking in: he clearly saw himself in the people he met. The project is mostly portraiture, often close-up, with some shots against the backdrop of those fabled big skies and endless expanses. So I would fly to the south-west, rent a truck then travel around – to New Mexico, Utah, Colorado.” After meeting the Californian chapter, Gilford began saving up, planning to hit the circuit. Today, the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) has 15 member groups across the US, with one more in the Canadian Rockies. A King, a Queen and a Miss Dusty Spurs (the drag queen category) were crowned, and history was made. More than 100 people took part in this gay rodeo, as well as five cows, 10 calves, one pig and a Shetland pony. In 1975, Phil Ragsdale, then Emperor I of Reno, threw a benefit for a senior citizens Thanksgiving dinner. It is still run entirely by volunteers, on whom fanciful titles are bestowed. This pioneering LGBT non-profit, now the second-largest in the US, uses charitable fundraising to build ties with communities. The first gay rodeo happened in the mid-1970s, as one of the more creative fundraisers by the Imperial Court System. ‘We’re all from places that are still hostile to queerness.’ Photograph: Luke Gilford So it has felt really urgent to work on a wider scale beyond that personal level, to focus on what we all should be talking about and working towards.” But I started the project around the time Trump was elected. “To begin with, it was very personal, a way to reconnect with a side of myself I had suppressed. It embraces both ends of the American cultural spectrum: people living on the land, but who are also queer. What I think is really beautiful, and so inspiring, about the queer rodeo community is that it brings back that aura of promise. But as we grow older, we realise this promise is kind of a myth. “We’re taught in school to recite the national anthem every morning. The result is National Anthem, Gilford’s first photographic monograph – and, to his mind, a timely musing on the state of America.
We don’t think of them going together.” He set about exploring how they might. “We all know what a rodeo is,” he says, “and we all know what queer is. So this chance encounter with a bunch of people who’d managed to do what seemed impossible to him was as exciting as it was discombobulating. We don’t think of them as going together.’ Photograph: Luke Gilford ‘We all know what a rodeo is and we all know what queer is.