Tender Portraits of America’s Queer Rodeo

inherited his love of the rodeo from his father, who built their home and filled it with memorabilia from his years as a rodeo champion and later a judge, including snakeskin boots, Stetson hats, and giant silver and gold champion belt buckles.

“Our family’s stories are visual but they were also communicated in the body – in this case through my father’s injuries and his scars. Our stories are a way for us to make sense of our past and to create our future, too,” says Gilford, who will throw his hat in the ring with the December 1 publication of, a collection of portraits made at the International Gay Rodeo Association , the organising body for the LGBTQ cowboy and cowgirl communities in North America.

Gilford first discovered IGRA in 2016 while attending a Pride event in San Francisco and came upon a booth of queer people wearing cowboy hats, playing Dolly Parton songs, and greeting the crowd. In an instant, Gilford knew he was home. The next weekend, he attended his first queer rodeo in New Mexico and began making a series of tender portraits celebrating and documenting the IGRA in all its glory.

“I think the most profound impression from growing up around the rodeo was coming to understand the body as inherently fragile, and the ultimate witness to care and love. At the rodeo there is always a subtext of danger and violence, contrasted by so much beauty on the surface. The rodeo is a spectacle, oozing with displays of power and vulnerability. It’s a celebration of that constant struggle between the two. And above all, it is a sensory experience.

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