Story by Ryan T. Bell / Photographs by Adam Jahiel
Seventeen years ago, photographer Adam Jahiel embarked on a mission to document buckaroo life. Thousands of images later, he says he’s still discovering the secrets of one of america’s most unique cultures.
The term “daybreak” bares loose definition on a buckaroo outfit in The Great Basin. For the cook, it comes around 3 A.M. when he rises to fire the stove and make breakfast, be it in a chuckwagon, cook tent, or the mobile cook trucks used in recent years. Next to rise is the horse wrangler who saddles in the dark and rides into the black desert to jingle the cavvy. While he’s away, the rest of the crew stirs. No reveille of trumpets sounds, just the hum of propane lanterns as they are lit one-by-one.
The cowboy’s bide their time, waiting for the lanterns’ heat to warm the air inside the canvas tent walls. Finally, they dress and emerge, carrying the lantern in one hand and a smoking cigarette in the other. Gathered in the cook tent, the crew is somber, few of them looking up from cups of coffee long enough to make small talk. Metal forks plow eggs across plastic plates as they wait for the sound of the wrangler and the saddle herd’s arrival. They hardly notice Wyoming-based photographer Adam Jahiel waiting on the periphery, with camera in hand.
Armed with an out-dated medium format camera, Adam Jahiel has created a body of work that documents nearly two decades of Great Basin ranching in what he dubs The Last Cowboy Project. Every summer since 1989 Jahiel has traveled parts of Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon snapping photography of the region’s cowboys, landscapes, and historic ranches. Today, his collection numbers in the thousands, including portraits of buckaroos, horse roundups, summer brandings, and tent camps in the middle of the Nevada desert. Looking at the images, the buckaroo culture of The Great Basin feels permanent, rooted into the soil like the wind-blown sagebrush.
Cookhouse Inspiration. The Last Cowboy Project was born on a summer day in 1989 when Adam Jahiel – then working for The Sacramento Bee newspaper – was sent to a ranch on the California-Nevada border to shoot photographs of the famed rodeo bull, Skoal’s Pacific Bell.
“After we drove around the ranch shooting photos of the bull, we ended up back at the kitchen for a cup of coffee. I looked around inside the cookhouse and saw how stark and pared-down everything was,” Jahiel remembers. “There was the obligatory table with red-and-white checkerboard table cloth and a conglomeration of ketchup, mustard, Tabasco sauce, and toothpicks. The walls were whitewashed wood and there was absolutely nothing fancy about it. In the other room there was a couch that had been destined for the dump years before. Cowboy gear was everywhere and someone had drawn a crude bucking-horse illustration that hung on the wall.”
Jahiel felt like he had landed in a picture by Walker Evans, a photographer he admires who documented rural America in the 1930’s as part of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression.
“There was something incredibly compelling about those FSA images,” he recalls. They are technically perfect, and the subject matter had real historical importance. It wasn’t just eye candy, they were historical documents.”
In a cookhouse on the California-Nevada border Jahiel found subject material on par with the work of his photographic hero, Evans. He asked the ranch owners for permission to return and shoot photographs on his own time. They agreed and provided him with a letter that gave him access to the many ranches they owned across Nevada.
“The first ranch I spent significant time on was the IL Ranch in northern Nevada,” he remembers. “I arrived and began taking photographs, even though I really didn’t know what I was doing. I kept my eyes open and mouth shut. Also, I made sure that whatever I did in the course of the day, that I did it last. Be it eating, sleeping, or whatever. I didn’t want to miss anything and just tried to stay out of the way as much as possible.”
“After about ten days of shooting I thanked the cowboss, told him I had gotten the pictures I needed and that I would be leaving that morning. All he said was, ‘Okay’, and then rode off on his horse to go back to work.”
The departure felt anti-climatic and as Jahiel packed-up his gear he thought about how difficult it can be to enter the closed-off world of The Great Basin buckaroo. Then, the cowboss came riding back over and said, “If you want to do anymore shooting on any other ranches around here, like the YP up the road, you can use me as a reference.” Adam Jahiel had a foot inside the door.
“As a rule, these guys are poker-faced and men of few words,” Jahiel observes. “I had no idea where I stood with them. So, when the cowboss said that, it was one of the greatest honors I’ve ever received. That experience set everything in motion.”
Wall Art. Adam Jahiel’s camera is drawn to moments that go beyond what would be considered Marlboro ad-worthy photographs. As he describes them, the pictures of the Last Cowboy fall into two categories: “hero” and “documentary”. Hero photographs are the images that command attention and make for popular wall art. Rancho Grande, a photograph of Jahiel’s available in poster form, is one of these. Packed with action and dramatic contrasts in color between clouds, shadows, and light, this “heroic” photograph is both beautiful and symbolic. Jahiel sees in it a statement about man’s relationship to the natural world. A rearing horse looms larger than life over a cowboy whose face is obscured by the shadows of the corral fence. The photograph captures the perilous balance between wild and tame that is the realm of the professional horsemen of The Great Basin.
On the other extreme, “documentary” photographs are taken from everyday life, giving the viewer an intimate feel for buckaroo culture. Though they’re not likely to appear above anyone’s fireplace, Jahiel appreciates them for their “soul and grit”.
“So much of the material I’m interested in takes place before and after work,” he says. “Guys get up and do their thing, take off for the day’s work and when they get back they work on their saddles, read, fix gear, snooze, and tell stories. Really, it’s a miracle that this style of life exists in this day and age.”
Naptime is an unassuming documentary photograph that makes up in storytelling what it lacks in heroic action. Taken during an afternoon branding on Nevada’s TS Ranch, Jahiel remembers the story of how the photograph unfolded.
“There were horrendous numbers of cattle to brand and it was one of these days that just seem to go on and on, and everyone was dead tired. In the background of the picture you see a couple of guys working. There is an older kid full of energy and spinning around with his arms and legs in motion – of course, kids don’t ever get tired and slow down until the moment when they drop asleep. Then, there are a couple guys standing around checking stuff out. One man, sitting with his back to you, has a big triangle-shaped sweat stain across his shirt. And, in the very foreground there is a young kid, maybe six years old, who is crashed-out asleep. He has an old man’s hat on, his face is dirty, and he clearly couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I saw the scene and realized how many incredible storylines were being told,” Jahiel says. “It’s such a great one, but it isn’t a flashy photograph that anybody will ever buy to hang on their wall.”
Cowboy Portrait. Any photographer who hopes to take a portrait of the notoriously stone-faced buckaroo has their work cut out for them. In the Last Cowboy one of Adam Jahiel’s greatest challenges was to blend into the woodwork and to put his subjects at ease so they would act naturally in front of the camera. The key to his success was returning to the same ranches over the years, eventually earning him the cowboys’ trust.
“Sticking with something for over fifteen years will get you a different feel than if you just went once and left,” Jahiel observes. “I like returning to visit these guys, and they open up to me as a result.”
Jahiel also discovered that when he was recommended to a new ranch on behalf of a cowboy down the road, the introduction was worth gold. “From one ranch to the next, it is such a small world. One guy recommends you to another, saying, ‘You gotta check this other ranch out. They’re real western.’” Jahiel adds, “The more time you spend, the more guys you meet, and the more you fit in and learn the ropes. You learn when to disappear and when to reappear.”
A portrait photographer’s goal is to catch their subject in a moment when their nature is unaffected by the presence of a camera. Sometimes Jahiel succeeded by blending into the woodwork and catching them unaware. Portrait photographs like Riley Cleaver have an intimate quality that feel like you are sitting alongside the cowboys in a cooktent or bunkhouse. In other pictures, though, Jahiel used a technique he learned working with renowned portrait photographer Arnold Newman, whose portraits of people like President John F. Kennedy and the composer Igor Stravinsky are world-famous.
“He was a crusty old guy,” Jahiel remembers of the late Newman. “He would fuss around with his lights for what seemed like forever. The people he was photographing were excited to get their picture taken, but they would nearly fall asleep by the time Arnold was ready. I realized that he was doing it on purpose. In the interim of boring his subjects to death, he would scope them out to observe their nature. Little by little, as you relax you become more real.”
“I’m always watching people, like how they sit and their body language. When I told these cowboys that I was going to take a picture, immediately they would stiffen up. So, I would guide them back to sitting the way they were when they were acting naturally.”
Portraits like Bunkhouse #1, Fritz and Snooks, and His Turn to Cook look as natural and familiar as a school kid’s photograph in a proud parent’s wallet.
At Shutter Speed. Adam Jahiel is a cowboy boot-shod horseman at heart. Horses graze outside the window of his Wyoming studio and cowboy gear like lassos and snaffle bits intermingle among his endless collection of photographic equipment. It’s understandable, then, why Jahiel draws a parallel between the professions of buckaroo and photographer. He sees in both a need for skilled expertise and “gut” instincts, whether it is to make a difficult rope throw or snap a technically perfect picture. The adjustments of F-stop, aperture, and focus require as much training to learn as it does for a cowboy to calculate a steer’s running speed, the horse’s approach angle, and the length of rope necessary to make a catch.
“Any kind of art form – whether it be writing, photography, roping, or saddle making – requires that so many great things come together to produce them,” says Jahiel.
The revelation came to him during the summer of 2006 when he visited a cow camp on the Spanish Ranch in Nevada. One day, he overheard the cowboys discussing a ranch roping they’d attended in Elko, Nevada.
“They described one particular cowboy’s rope throw in an incredible way, as if they’d watched it in slow motion,” he recalls. “Listening to them, you could almost feel the position of the cowboy’s hand and wrist, how the rope slowly uncoiled, the shape of the wave it made as it went through the air, and the way it landed so that the calf stepped into it.”
Jahiel recognized in their conversation a concept that he was used to discussing as a photography teacher, the idea of a “slice of life”. In theory, Jahiel thinks of a photograph like a frozen moment in time that enables the viewer to see details that aren’t visible with the naked eye. The cowboys, in effect, were discussing a “slice of life” taken during the Elko ranch rodeo. Only, their photographic slice was printed to memory and visible without the need of a camera. Jahiel has since come to appreciate buckaroos in a different way. Not just as a skilled cowboys and horsemen, but as fellow artist.
“It was fascinating to listen to them because they were talking about art and aesthetics. I can throw a rope, just like a lot of people can take a picture. But, these guys described roping with such fabulous description.”
This new appreciation cast The Last Cowboy Project into a different light. Jahiel’s photographs were no longer simply a documentation of Great Basin ranching culture, but literal slices of buckaroo life as seen through the expert eye of the buckaroo.
Of all the pictures in the Last Cowboy’s collection, Roping A Cloud stands out as Jahiel’s masterpiece. He took it one pre-dawn morning at a cowcamp on the IL Ranch in Nevada. The wrangler had corralled the saddle herd and the outfit’s top roper was methodically roping out the day’s mounts.
“The scene was pregnant with possibilities,” Jahiel remembers. “There are a lot of patterns that occur from the repetition of cowboy work, like roping, branding, and herding. You know what is going to happen, so a photographer can have a leg-up on things and be prepared. I recognized the pattern of the wrangler as he would step forward, throw the rope, and catch horse after horse.”
It was pre-dawn and there was hardly any light to shoot by. When Jahiel looked through the viewfinder all he saw was black. Nonetheless, he adjusted the camera’s settings to capture as much light as possible and trained it on the center of the rope corral. He relied on timing alone to take photo after photo, not knowing what image he was capturing. It wasn’t until a couple weeks later, when Jahiel returned to his Wyoming studio and developed the rolls of film, that he found out whether or not he was successful.
“There was one picture that I could see from a mile away was the one,” Jahiel recalls. “The rope happened to be encircling a solitary cloud in the background sky. Did I sit there and wait for the wrangler’s rope to go around the cloud? Of course not. That would be impossible to do. I didn’t even realize the cloud was there. I barely had enough light to see the man’s rope by. But, there are certain things the camera can see and capture that your eye can’t.”
“That’s the magic of photography. You prepare yourself the best you can, and then trust the luck factor.”
The Anonymous Buckaroo. In a deserted bunkhouse on southeastern Oregon’s ZX Ranch, Adam Jahiel stumbled across an artifact of cowboy archeology, a buckaroo’s journal. The author’s entries were short, sometimes cryptic, and often comical. One thing about the diary, though, was particularly intriguing: it was written graffiti-like on the walls of the bunkhouse in a hand-written cursive that was barely legible. The anonymous buckaroo wrote like a prison inmate compelled to keep time on his cell wall. The entries began at ceiling height, with straight-lined sentences that descended into columnar disarray at waist-level. He recorded livestock movements, wrote about the events of daily life, and concluded each entry with a comment about the weather.
10-6 Rode in lower reservoir. 110 pairs. Rained all afternoon. – Cold.
10-7 Bosses late for work. Being the loyal dedicated hardworking crew, we went on with work. Shipped 80 pair. For Little Coyote moved 204 cows and 22 bulls from B. Coyote to Upper Res. Mike took sick with Yellow Belly. Claytons birthday. – Cold, windy.
10-8 Gathered Thompson into Big Coyote. 91 cows 4 bulls. Son of bitch. The whole bunch was. – Nice.
Like the musings of a disappeared cowboy in an abandoned bunkhouse, Adam Jahiel has observed first-hand that the ranching culture of The Great Basin is fading. During his nearly two decades in the region, Jahiel has witnessed old-time cowboys get older, some of them retire, others having passed away. The younger generations have become scarce, drawn away from the cowboy life by a variety of economic, political, and social pressures. The ranches themselves are even disappearing, sold to owners not requiring cowcamps and the buckaroos that tend them.
“The ‘disappearing cowboy’ is a huge cliché,” Jahiel admits. “However, no matter how hard you pretend that you are living in the old days, you’re not. That part of the country (The Great Basin) is a slice of the past that has practically disappeared. They live in camps, tents, and teepees. They have camp cooks. Maybe a radio, if they can even pick up a signal. From morning to night they are camped out somewhere in the desert miles from civilization. Because of that, they have to rely on what bare necessities they have. Visually, it is fascinating to see a bunch of teepees out there in the middle of nowhere. The makeshift corrals they put up. The ancient buildings left behind that mark the old locations of former camps.”
It’s understandable, then, why Adam Jahiel considers a deserted bunkhouse with graffiti on the walls to be an archeological treasure. The Great Basin buckaroo is not permanent after all. Walls get painted over, or worse, they come down altogether when the building crumbles. In the end, wind-blown sagebrush will outlast the buckaroo. At least through the lens of Adam Jahiel’s The Last Cowboy Project the culture of The Great Basin buckaroo is guaranteed some form of cowboy afterlife.
For More Information: A collection of Adam Jahiel’s photography is available for viewing online at: www.adamjahiel.com.
