• About the Work of Art

• Activities for Bullrider 1985, High School Rodeo, Mineral Wells, TX, 1985

Among the many artists represented in this guide, Luther Smith is the only living artist. His photographs chronicle the people and landscapes of the American West. Since he was a boy, Smith has been fascinated with the West, especially Texas. He read many biographies of historical figures like Sam Houston, which gave him a sense of Texas history and people. Born in 1950 in Tishomingo, Mississippi, Smith recalls, “When I was growing up in Mississippi, we didn’t have a television until I was seven years old . . . and there weren’t many magazines around.” At the age of ten, his family moved to Aurora, Illinois. Smith’s first photographs were of his friends and family.

Following graduate school in the 1970s, Smith spent nine years teaching at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, and a number of his photographs taken during that time captured the city’s nightlife. From 1978 to 1983, he concentrated on color landscape photography and images of high school teenagers participating in special events, such as swimming competitions. After moving to Texas in 1983, Smith began to photograph high school rodeo events held in and around Fort Worth. This was followed by a series on landscape. Although Smith has traveled widely throughout the Southwest and has spent time in Spain, Mexico, and New Zealand, he primarily takes his landscape photographs in a 200-mile radius around Fort Worth.

During an interview in January 2001, Smith talked about his career. He cited photographers Lewis Hine, Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans as significant influences on his work. Hine, however, is singled out as a particularly strong influence because of his pictures of children. Smith says that one reason he likes Hine’s photographs is because he photographed children working, and as a child Smith also worked. While covering the high school rodeo, Smith was impressed with the amount of responsibility the teenagers had and just how much hard work they invested in the care of their animals.

By 1997 Smith had created a body of photographs focusing on the Trinity River. Though at first he did not envision these photographs as a series, he eventually published a book titled, appropriately enough, Trinity River. Smith considers himself a landscape photographer, though he occasionally still takes portraits. He believes that images are generated from who the photographer is as much as from the subject in front of the lens, and that good photographers find subject matter that helps them express their sense of the world.

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