The American cowboy has long been cast as a rugged white loner riding across the frontier. But that image leaves out a vital part of the West’s history; the Black cowboys and cowgirls who raised families, competed in rodeos, cared for horses and the land, and kept Western traditions alive across generations.
Acclaimed photographer and director Ivan McClellan is working to change that narrative. Through his lens, Black Western culture takes center stage, capturing a legacy that has always existed but has too often been left out of the story. His new photography book, Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion, features 91 previously unpublished photographs that celebrate Black cowboys and cowgirls not as supporting characters in someone else’s Western, but as icons in their own right.
Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion is a newly sequenced second edition of McClellan’s 2024 photobook, Eight Seconds, which documents Black cowboy and cowgirl culture.
A New Lens Into The American West
Growing up in Kansas City, McClellan was familiar with the cowboy image he saw throughout his life. Men who resembled John Wayne fit the mold. But he never imagined that his Black neighbor down the street, who raised cattle and wore a baseball cap and overalls, could also claim the title.
That changed in 2015 when a trip to a rodeo in Oklahoma opened his eyes. For the first time, he saw Black cowboys and cowgirls who challenged everything he thought a cowboy or cowgirl should look like.
He saw men in gold chains and basketball shorts riding bulls, and women with long braids and acrylic nails riding horses at top speed. The blend of familiar Black cultural elements and Western traditions felt like home to McClellan, inspiring him to share what he had discovered with the world.
McClellan began photographing Black rodeos and documenting the culture surrounding them.
Documenting Real Cowboy Culture
In 2023, McClellan founded the 8 Seconds Rodeo to address what he saw as a disparity in the sport. He wanted Black cowboys to compete for substantial prize money rather than the few hundred dollars they often earned while other competitors took home far more.
In its first year, the rodeo drew about 2,000 people and awarded $60,000 in prize money. McClellan says the payouts helped some athletes purchase new trucks and trailers and earn their professional cards. The following year, the event moved into a hockey arena and sold 7,200 tickets. By its third year, the rodeo had expanded to Portland, Oregon, where it originated, and Philadelphia.
Alongside the release of Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion, McClellan’s documentary, 8 Seconds Rodeo, premiered on October 10, giving a voice to the people behind the images.
Ahead of the release, The Black Wall Street Times spoke with McClellan about how documenting Black Western culture goes beyond the camera.
The Black Wall Street Times: Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion is an expanded and resequenced edition of the original 2024 release. What changed in how you see this body of work, and what guided the new sequencing?
Ivan McClellan: I think about the first book like Jay-Z’s Vol. 1. It was a complete statement for where I was at that moment, but it was never the end of the story. I kept photographing, the relationships kept getting deeper, and I kept learning more about the people and the culture.
So Legacy in Motion feels more like the next volume than a revision. I’m not going back trying to fix the first book. I’m building on it. Some of the photographs mean something different to me now because I know the people in them better, I’ve watched families grow, and I understand certain moments in a way I couldn’t have when I first made the pictures. The sequencing came from that growth. I was less interested in arranging a collection of individual standout images and more interested in how the photographs talk to each other; family, style, movement, competition, quiet, then back into the arena. The body of work has expanded, but so has my relationship to it.
Which images or moments were you most excited to add? Do you have any inspirations or stories behind the new images that weren’t part of the original release?
IM: What excited me most was expanding the book’s world. The first book had a lot of the images people might expect from rodeo—the action, the horses, the riders—but over time I became even more interested in everything around those moments. The new photographs let me show more of the culture between the eight seconds. People getting dressed, talking at the fence, families moving through the grounds, kids watching the adults, somebody sitting alone before they ride. Those quieter pictures matter to me because that’s where you start to understand that this isn’t just a sport. It’s a whole way of life.
Because I’ve kept photographing many of the same people and communities, some of the new images carry history. I might have photographed someone years ago and now I’m photographing their children, or I might see a kid who used to be on the sidelines step into the arena themselves. That kind of continuity excites me. It’s like knowing an artist’s catalog well enough that the deep cuts start to mean as much as the singles. The big rodeo photographs pull you in, but some of my favorite additions tell you who these people are when nobody is performing for the crowd.
Do you want readers to have a different feeling when viewing the resequenced edition? Do you want readers to move through it like a ride, a day at the rodeo, or something else?
IM: I want people to feel what it is like to be in the environment. The book starts in nature, giving you a sense of place before it moves closer to the people. From there, it becomes more intimate. These are people I’ve known and photographed for years, and I wanted the sequencing to reflect that sense of relationship and connection. As you move through the book, I want it to feel less like you are looking at strangers and more like you know these people. Like you have spent time with them, understand how they move through the world, and have been immersed in the environment around them. That was more important to me than making it feel like a literal day at the rodeo. I wanted it to feel like entering a place and being gradually welcomed further in.
Like your rodeo circuit, the title comes from the eight seconds a bull rider must stay mounted. You’ve described those seconds as a space where life, death, and total presence converge. How have you tried to capture that intensity in a still image?
IM: For me, that intensity isn’t always in the action. I take many of my photographs before or after the competition, or nowhere near a bull ride at all. It can be somebody standing with their horse, getting dressed, sitting quietly, or looking directly into the camera. I’m interested in the presence people have in those moments.
The eight seconds became a way of thinking about the whole project. In the arena, an incredibly brief moment heightens everything, but an entire life surrounds it. The relationships, the land, the clothes, the horses, the families, the hours of waiting and preparation. I’m trying to make photographs that hold some of that same sense of presence, even when nothing dramatic is happening. Sometimes the quietest photograph can carry as much intensity as the ride.
Beyond the arena, how does “eight seconds” apply to the lives of the people you photographed?
IM: The eight seconds everybody watches are built on years of work nobody sees. A rider can spend years training, traveling, working another job, caring for animals, getting hurt, healing, and doing it all over again for the chance to have those eight seconds. That contrast has become a big part of what the title means to me. There’s also something about presence. When you are on a bull or a horse, you have to be completely in that moment. You can’t be halfway there. I think that idea is bigger, because so much of life is preparation for these very short moments when everything comes together.
How did you earn the trust of the cowboys and cowgirls you photographed, and how did those relationships change over time?
IM: Mostly by coming back. I first went to a Black rodeo in Oklahoma in 2015, and I kept showing up after that. Rodeos, ranches, riding clubs, people’s homes. I spent time with people even when there wasn’t necessarily a photograph to make. I think trust comes from people knowing you are genuinely interested in them and not just trying to collect an image. I want to know who somebody is, how they got there, who their family is, what they care about. Over time, the people I photographed became friends. That changes the pictures because you are no longer photographing somebody from the outside. There is familiarity there. They know me, I know them, and that intimacy becomes part of the work.
Black cowboy culture and personal style are central to these portraits, from the hats and boots to how people carry themselves. What do you want viewers to understand about the role of dress and presentation in the world of Black cowboys?
IM: First, it isn’t a costume. I generally don’t dress people or put them in environments I created. I’m photographing how they chose to show up. The hat, the boots, the jewelry, the belt buckle, the way somebody wears their jeans or their shirt- that belongs to them.
Western clothing has function, but it also has identity and pride. Black people have always taken something practical and made it personal. Style is in the clothes, but also in how somebody carries themselves. That matters just as much to me. You can tell when somebody knows who they are.
The book challenges whitewashed myths of the American West. What misconceptions about cowboys did you encounter or have to challenge most often when capturing these images?
IM: The biggest misconception is probably still that Black cowboys are somehow unusual. That idea mostly exists outside of the communities I photograph. The people in the book are not surprised by their own presence. Their parents rode. Their grandparents rode. Their families have been around horses and cattle for generations. I never approached the work thinking I needed to prove that Black cowboys existed. I was photographing what was already there. If the work challenges somebody’s idea of what the West looks like, that’s because their idea was incomplete to begin with.
Many people are surprised to learn that Black cowboys were foundational to ranching and rodeo. What do you hope readers who’ve never heard this history take away from your photographs?
IM: I hope they understand that this isn’t only history. It matters to know that Black cowboys helped build the West, but I don’t want people to close the book thinking they learned an interesting fact about the past. These communities are here right now. Kids are learning to ride, families are ranching, people compete every weekend, riding clubs and rodeos thrive, and generations of knowledge are passed down.
For me, the work has become less about convincing people that Black cowboys existed and more about showing the people who are carrying the culture forward. I want people to see the history, but I also want them to see the joy, style, skill, family, competition, and everyday life that exists right now.
Was there a person, family, or rodeo that shaped the book’s heart? What did they teach you about legacy?
IM: Okmulgee and The Roy LeBlanc Invitational have always felt like a family reunion to me. It is held in August in Oklahoma, so it is unbelievably hot. The humidity is so thick you feel like you could eat the air with a spoon. Everybody is sweating, everybody is a little loose from the heat, and people come in from all over the country. The trailers fill the grounds. Riding clubs come for the parade. Families come back year after year. It becomes its own little world for the weekend.
The competition is extraordinary, but the culture around it is even bigger. That is what stayed with me. The parade, the clothes, the music, the horses, people seeing friends they have not seen since the last rodeo, kids running around, people talking at the fence. It feels like everybody knows why they are there. It is also a special place because the rodeo spent decades at the Bob Arrington Arena on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land. That version of Okmulgee no longer exists. After the 2025 rodeo, the event lost that longtime home and moved to Shawnee in 2026.
So when I look at the photographs now, I realize the book became a time capsule without me intending it to be one. I was photographing something that felt permanent because people had been returning to that place for generations. Now those pictures hold a version of the rodeo that you cannot go back and experience in the same way. That taught me something about legacy. You think you are photographing the present, and then one day you realize you were also preserving something.
