Photojournalist Ivan McClellan went to his first Black rodeo in 2015, and he’s never looked back. His friend and filmmaker, Charles Perry, was working on the documentary The Black Cowboy and asked McClellan if he’d like to tag along to a rodeo in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. McClellan joined with his camera and quickly became captivated by the rich blend of traditional Western Americana with his own Black culture and heritage that he encountered.
Since then, McClellan has been photographing Black rodeos as part of his art practice while continuing to work as a designer at Adobe in Portland, Oregon. His ongoing photo project, “Eight Seconds” (the amount of time a cowboy must stay on a bull during a rodeo), has been developed into art shows and, most recently, a photo book entitled Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture, published by Damiani in April. McClellan has even launched his own Black rodeo in Portland, the first of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. Following a hugely successful inaugural year in 2023, the event’s second iteration will be held next week on June 16.
It’s impossible to look at McClellan’s photos and not be completely mesmerized by the world and people he captures with his camera. Upon first seeing them, I had to reach out to learn more about the artist and his fascination with this culture. McClellan’s responses to my questions are below.
The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
What brought you to Portland from your hometown of Kansas City?
Portland is a place where you kind of end up. Everybody that you ask, “How did you end up in Portland?” They’re like, “Well, I went through a breakup…” — that’s usually how it starts. And that was true for me, too. I was going through a breakup and wanted to get as geographically far away from that person as possible while still being in the United States, so I ended up in the Northwest.
Also, I was working in marketing and advertising, and this is a mecca for sports marketing, brand work, graphic design, and all that kind of stuff. So, I ended up out here for career reasons as well. This was in 2011.
I didn’t know a thing about Portland. I thought it was on the ocean; it turns out it’s about two hours inland. I found it to be the whitest city on the planet; it’s very, very homogenous here. I didn’t see a Black person for a month after I moved here.
How did you first get into photography as an art practice?
I was doing a lot of campaigns for brands and a lot of commercial work at my job, and at some point, I was doing a lot of email marketing, which I wasn’t thrilled about. So, I picked up photography as a hobby to express myself creatively because I wasn’t doing that at work. I went on a trip to Istanbul and took a camera with me. It was this wonderful gateway, this entry point into people’s lives that I never knew it would be. l made friends with people I took photos of and went into places I would never have but had the bravery to do because of the camera. I ended up taking gorgeous pictures there.
I didn’t think much of it when I came home, but it had really infected me; I was obsessed with photography and still am. I spent the next decade or so learning the tool, learning how to get good at it, and experimenting with every single mode of photography, from landscapes to studio photography, until I discovered street photography. That was it. That was exciting. That first moment of being out in public with the camera and encountering people with this tool, I could make art anywhere I was, at any given moment.
It was about three years into doing street photography that I got invited to go to my first rodeo. I took all those skills directly into that space, and there was a ton of joy there.
What was that first rodeo like for you? What was it about what you came upon there that completely captivated you?
The first thing I noticed was how people were dressed. You had cowboys in jeans starched and creased so much that they would stand up by themselves after taking them off at night. You had men with precise trim mustaches and pinky rings and women with acrylic nails clutching the reins as they rode 50 miles an hour around the arena with their box braids blowing behind them. And then you had cowboys riding with no shirt on and a gold chain and Jordans and basketball shorts. I saw Black culture seamlessly and organically merged with Western culture, which I love, but in a completely unexpected way.
I saw Black culture seamlessly and organically merged with Western culture, which I love, but in a completely unexpected way.
The music playing during the rodeo was Frankie Beverly and Maze, Luther Vandross and Drake, and all of these things that are part of the culture, but during a rodeo. Listening to blues, R&B, and gospel while watching this exciting, fast-paced, high-octane, traditional American event just felt really good. It made something that could have been very foreign and uncomfortable, incredibly familiar.
At the time, I hadn’t really found the Black community in Portland yet. Being in a familiar, comfortable place was a huge relief. Like I said, I would go days without seeing other Black folks, and this was a vacation from that for me.
Typically, where are the rodeos that you photograph held?
Most of the rodeos I go to are in Oklahoma, whether in Boley, Oklahoma, Bristow, or Okmulgee; those are the rodeos I go to the most. Then I go to a lot of rodeos in Houston, Texas, and there’s a big one in Arizona, the Arizona Black Rodeo. They’re all around the South, but there’s really nothing like Oklahoma.
I like to go to rodeos that are outdoors, just for lighting reasons. I don’t like arena lights in my photos; they make Black skin kind of green because of the fluorescence. So I like to shoot outside. I like smaller rodeos; if I have to put in a request for a press pass, I’m probably not gonna go. I like to show up, sit on the fence, and enjoy the show.
What sorts of details, people, and moments catch your eye at these rodeos?
I’ll walk around for a while at a rodeo, just looking for what I’m attracted to and what my heart is drawn to, whether it be a person’s look, a texture, or an animal. That’s a pretty organic way of describing how I figure out what to shoot.
Fashion is still a big draw for me. What someone’s wearing in contrast to the background is really compelling. Just shooting someone in a T-shirt usually doesn’t foot the bill; they’ve got to have a little bit of fringe on them, some color, and a little bit of a bedazzle.
Women are less prominent than men in this space. Most rodeos have only one or two women’s events, and the rest are for men. I’m always curious about the female athletes, their athleticism, and their connection with their animals; I spend a lot of time and focus on their stories so that they have equal weight in my work as the content about the men.
From street photography, I’ve learned how to assess whether a person wants their picture taken or not—whether they’re moving toward me or away from me as I walk to them, whether they’re making eye contact or not. Their general posture and presentation to the world tell me whether they’re receptive to having their photo taken or not. Generally, older people always want their photo taken. Anybody who’s 50 or older loves to be in front of the camera and is honored to be captured. I think it’s because they grew up before social media, so to point a camera at them is a low-risk thing, whereas younger folks always want to know: Where are these photos going? What are you doing with this? Who are you? They’re protective of their image, understandably so.
Can you tell me about the second-annual Eight Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo you have planned in Portland this year?
Two years back, I made friends with a cowboy named Ouncie Mitchell, who was murdered while he was out on the road. It was right around that time that I had the opportunity, thought, and inspiration to do my own rodeo as a way of creating equity in the space, so the cowboys didn’t have to struggle as hard as he did to do what they love.
A lot of Black rodeos pay very little prize money. Across nine events, they’ll pay less than $10,000 in prize money, so I wanted to do fewer events, five total, and pay out $60,000 in cash. So that’s about $12,000 per event across men’s and women’s events; we do two women’s events, three men’s events, and mutton busting for the kids.
All of this is designed to give the cowboys a really big payday that they may not have had so they can afford to rodeo throughout the summer to get the reps that will allow them to compete at a higher level. Eventually, they can move on to the really big rodeos, where they have the chance to make millions of dollars in a weekend.
That’s the design, and I think it’s working. Last year, we had 2,500 fans in the arena, and we sold out about ten days before the event. Cowboys went home with checks, and then they spent the whole summer rodeoing back home and they bought trailers and they bought their pro rodeo cards. We saw that infusion of capital really enhancing and improving people’s lives.
I couldn’t think of anything more liberating and freeing to do as a Black man than to rodeo on Juneteenth.
Why is hosting the event on Juneteenth important to you?
I couldn’t think of anything more liberating and freeing to do as a Black man than to rodeo on Juneteenth. This is the first Black rodeo in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s exciting and new for people in the region to see Black folks doing something they didn’t even know was part of their culture.
We have a DJ, DJ O.G.ONE, who’s a legend in Portland, and he plays music pretty much throughout the entire rodeo. We really hit the cultural significance of the rodeo and the meaning of Juneteenth during the day. At this year’s event, we’re going to have 7,200 people. We’re sold out again. We’re at a much bigger arena, and we’re just gonna blow it out and have a really good time, but a really good time with the purpose.
On top of planning the rodeo, I know you have a show, “Eight Seconds,” that just opened at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland. What’s that show like?
I’ve done a few shows in Portland, so I always mix it up and show people something new because it’s generally the same crowd from show to show. When I was putting together my book, I noticed and got feedback from the editor that my photos can get repetitive. It’s like person, horse, background, and it’s just that over and over again. It’s a person looking directly at the camera; they’re holding a horse, and then it’s either dirt or trees behind them. The editor constantly pushed me to mix things up, give them new shots, better environmental shots, action shots, maybe shots of people without a horse, shots of people dancing, or other things tangential to the rodeo environment.
But in curating this show, I was like, let’s just do the horse, person, and background shot over and over and over and over again. So there are 15 nearly identical shots of different cowboys in similar poses staring directly at the camera. So it’s classical portraiture; it harkens to paintings. I shot low, looking up at the figure in the shot like old propaganda. It’s a Black face in a Western position in a position of authority that you wouldn’t traditionally expect them to be in. I hope people are receptive to it. It’s a shot that I really enjoy taking, and it’s a shot that I seek out often in my work. For me, it’s just rhythm. It’s the pulse that I beat at, and it’s where I naturally resolve in my creative process to make that photo. I keep going back to it.
What was the experience like of publishing a book of your photos?
I have an Instagram account, and the whole gig on Instagram is to get people to stop scrolling. People are rapidly scrolling through content, and if you can get them to stop for a second and double-tap, you win. That’s so unsatisfying! Especially when you spend time and money risking your physical safety to get a shot and only get a few likes. I wanted people to engage with the work more deeply and be curious about the details of the photo. So, I wanted it to be bigger than the size of a cell phone; I believe when a thing is printed, it becomes real. It’s out of the ephemera of zeros and ones on your computer, and it’s in real life; it’s permanent, and it really matters. So, publishing the book and getting it in as many households as possible was a big priority of mine. I feel like the subject matter deserves it. I feel like the people in the photos deserve to be honored in that way.
During the pandemic, I started to take this work very seriously, and it began to turn into a book. In 2020, I started to see these moments that connected with this story and throughline in the work, and I drilled into that for the next three years.
In 2022 I released a self-published version of the book. I did a Kickstarter, raised $26,000, made 600 copies, and sold those myself. I boxed them with my wife in the basement and sent them around the country and the world. That was cool, but I felt like it needed wider distribution than that.
I reached out to a friend, Miss Rosen, who is very big in the publishing world and asked her to edit the book. When I did the self-published version, I did everything and put together a book of my best shots. She came in and said, “Okay, this is great, but it’s basically a wedding album, and it’s repetitive, and it needs a little bit more rhythm and nuance than what you’ve created.”
So Miss Rosen took all the photos and put them together into this story of a day at the rodeo. It takes you from people arriving and relaxing with their friends and family to folks getting ready for competition to the competition itself, and it’s this nice gradient of action through the book. She did a beautiful job and created a story I never could have. When I created the first version of the book, it was difficult to curate and chop things. Miss Rosen could do it without any feeling about it, but also in a way that acknowledged and elevated things I didn’t think much about. There’s a picture of a church in the book, for example, with a septic tank in front of it and a tree hanging over the church. I would have never put that photo in the book, but looking at it now, it creates such a sense of place, of this rural, dusty lean-to of a building where people worship in the middle of the woods. It creates curiosity and is a palate cleanser between all of these other epic shots of the rodeo. She does that several times in the book.
I’m really grateful for the way that it came out. You have to work with somebody you trust in that process; somebody I didn’t would have only taken shots that painted the culture in a certain way. Miss Rosen did a good job creating a full, rich diorama of this world, and I think it’s represented accurately. People have been incredibly receptive to it, and people in the culture appreciate being honored this way.
