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.