Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographer Celebrates Black Cowboy Culture With New Book

Ron Tarver's 'The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America' is comprised of a 20,000 photos of Black cowboy life taken over 20 years.

Over 30 years ago, Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Ron Tarver started collecting and taking photographs of Black cowboys, rodeo queens, and ranchers across East Texas, Oklahoma, and Philadelphia. As an assignment for National Geographic and The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tarver has captured generations worth of cowboys and cowgirls in their element and compiled them into a complete book, The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America, released on Aug. 31.

Tarver’s photographs include cowboys working in their stables and working in their town parades, showing off their grand ranches and how they care for their horses. Tarver collected nearly 20,000 pictures in a storage container from his travels. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he’s set to be doing a book signing to promote his new book. On Sept. 7 at the 20 / 20 Photo Festival Photo Book Fair at Cherry Street Pier, the book’s stylistic photos will be displayed as part of the Portrait of Philadelphia exhibition.

Tarver said, “This is one of those projects that wouldn’t leave me alone for the longest time. It’s always been on my mind because it’s such an important project to get out into the public.”

One of the centerpieces for the book was North Philadelphia native Jordan Bullock, who was first photographed in 1993, working under his father, Bumpsey Bullock, who ran the White House stables in Brewerytown.

Jordan, 43, now works as a racehorse trainer at Parx Casino and Racetrack. Bullock said, “This is all I ever knew. It was normal my whole life. That’s what we did on weekends and after school; it was my father and my aunt, my cousins, and one of my uncles. My mother’s side of the family — by total chance–my parents did not know this when they met each other — but my mother’s side of the family is in horses in Virginia.”

Bullock represents Philadelphia’s urban rodeo history in Tarver’s book. He recalled growing up: “You had the White House. You had 33rd Street, at 332nd, and Master, which is literally up the street from us. You had the Hole in the Wall, which was a stable where they broke a hole in the wall of a warehouse and built a stable. There’s, like, a whole culture.”

Tarver spent years, from as early as the 1990s, following Black cowboys across the country to explore Black horse cultures. Some images include a Philadelphia horseman playing basketball. At the same time, their horses idle in the background and another of two women cleaning a saddle while sitting on the hood of their Subaru.

Tarver wanted his images to tell the story of an urban and rich history. “I didn’t want to have a documentary book. I wanted to have a book that celebrated the lifestyle of Black people who share this Western heritage. Just, for lack of a better word, beautiful images of this lifestyle and people enjoying this culture,” he said.

He’s been glad to see Black cowboys enter more mainstream media with the likes of rapper Lil Nas X playing into a Black western aesthetic with his 2018 hit “Old Town Road” and Beyoncé breaking into the country genre with her new album, Cowboy Carter.

“I think it is more prevalent now because it’s out in the zeitgeist,” Tarver explained. “You can’t have better notoriety than Beyoncé coming out with an album. The Cowboy Carter album just blew everything up.”

“It became accepted, but there’s still a little bit of prejudice out there when it comes to what’s accepted as a country and what’s not accepted. I’m hoping that this book will just add to the conversation.”