(soft country music) - The cowboy hat, the boots, the horse, the flag is a powerful symbol for us as Americans.

I've taken in a single photo and put all of those elements together on a black woman and it's undeniable the power of those pieces coming together in one frame.

Taking that icon and merging it with a black man or a black woman means something deep.

It takes a lot of the stereotypes and the prejudices that we have about a black person and we merge 'em with our most noble ideas.

And it makes you think.

Or if you're a black person, it gives you, you know, a sense of pride.

Thank you (indistinct).

- No.

- No, that's- - Yeah.

- That's part of my deal.

- Well, it looks good in here.

- I get sleepy when the pressure gets high.

- Yeah.

- I go like, woo!

- Yeah.

- I'm tired (laughs).

- It looks good.

- So, yeah, we're good.

Thank you.

- You guys did a lot.

- Thank you.

I had, had the idea to do my own rodeo for about two years and I had been talking to other cowboys and other rodeo producers about it.

A friend of mine, he's like, "You do this stuff with black cowboys, "why don't we bring out some black cowboys for Juneteenth?"

Everybody in Portland, and outside of Portland, thought we had lost our minds.

You know, we heard people like, "Why would you do it there?"

Or "There's no western culture there."

(rope rattling) - I absolutely love rodeo.

I'm a tie-down calf roper and a team roper, but my passion is designing clothes and my company, we have a western wear line, me being a cowboy.

And then Mr. Ivan reached out to me and told me he was about to make history and I was like, oh, I'm gonna go see about that.

I gotta be there.

So, I have to bring the south out here to the Pacific Northwest, and let y'all see what we do.

- So, I've been a cowboy since I was about six, five years old.

I was riding horses in the backyard with my uncles and my cousins.

With bull riding you just gotta roll with the punches.

I mean tomorrow the rodeo's gonna be a sold-out crowd.

So, sold-out from back door to front door.

So, it's gonna be good energy, live and I can't wait.

(equipment rattling) - We've hauled in truckloads and truckloads of dirt.

We've got the best audio guy in the northwest working for us and we've got the best lighting guy in the northwest as well.

The idea was that we would do an inclusive rodeo and we would bring out folks that just hadn't felt comfortable going to a old-fashioned rodeo, but they could come to our rodeo.

(group shouting) (woman singing) I just thought these black cowboys here in Portland, will mean so much to the people here and it will literally change lives.

(group laughing) The tickets sold out in a few days.

It just sort of caught fire and everything went.

(people chattering) People treat me like I'm a rancher.

I'm not that guy.

(camera click) I don't know anything about rodeo or cowboy beyond what I've captured and I'm definitely not a cowboy myself.

I'm an artist and I do art.

(upbeat jazzy music) I grew up in Kansas City.

We grew up in a really interesting place because it was urban in front of our house, but behind our house was five acres of land.

You know, there were people back there raising cows and it was just like sort of growing up in two worlds at the same time.

We would watch old westerns on TV like Gun Smoke and Bonanza.

(soft music) We watched the Beverly Hillbillies.

For a long time a cowboy has kind of been one thing, and that's John Wayne.

This sort of independent white man in a cowboy hat permeated American culture in a really powerful way and became this icon, this untouchable icon.

It's not true.

(camera click) And when I found out that there were black cowboys, it just like kind of shattered a lot of those images that I had seen in films.

And it was like, wow, this culture that I love is related to this culture that I'm from was so exciting and so compelling to see that I kept going back 'cause it was like living out a real western in real life.

Black cowboy culture really is a lot like that rural urban divide.

(soft music) You'll see urban culture and country culture just smashing together.

Guys riding horses with no shirt and a gold chain and basketball shorts and Jordans.

Women with, you know, long acrylic nails and braids, grooming horses or barrel racing.

You know, the fashion really merges with what you see in the city.

You know, people are in cowboy culture, a little bit scrappy, not a little bit scrappy, they're scrappy as hell.

(soft country music) These are people you don't want to get in a fight with.

There's a lot of volatility in a lot of these folks' lives.

I don't take these people out of their element.

We're in people's backyards.

These are their horses, their land.

Their connections with these animals are just unreal.

I took a picture of a cowgirl named Courtney Solomon.

She said, "Hey Mr. Ivan, just to let you know "it's gonna rain in six minutes."

And I said, okay, I'm gonna lay on the ground like this and I want you to run your horse right by me.

She's 11.

And she said, "No problem."

And she comes galloping on her horse.

She gets right above me.

I take a picture of her.

She's, you know, looking straightforward.

Her braids are blowing back in the wind.

There's dramatic clouds going.

And right after that it started raining torrentially.

I just sort of shoot and I can feel when things are right and then something goes up your arm and goes up your spine and tickles your brain.

(soft country music) I'll shoot and then look at everything.

I don't trust the camera.

I think the important part for me is to revisit.

So, every year or so, I go through everything that I've ever taken.

I go through terabytes and terabytes of images.

I see different things.

Maybe I think I've discarded it because it was blurry, but now in this space that I'm in, I really love this photo and then I'll pull it back out and put it out in the world.

Truth is a very difficult thing to nail down.

I've seen people go into this rodeo space and have a completely different truth than me.

Some people might go in and focus on poverty, somebody might focus on fashion or athleticism or something like that.

The way that I capture rodeo, the way that I capture black cowboys is based on my experience.

I don't think anybody knows why someone gets on a bull or a bronco.

It's definitely not money.

It might be how they grew up.

It might be that just sort of simplifies things.

At least for eight seconds, like the only thing in the world is holding on.

(crowd cheering and applauding) People were really, really excited to be there.

You know, I've heard people say that it was a spiritual experience.

I've heard people say that it was the best live event that they've been to.

For Portland, there were a ton of black people there.

There were a ton of white allies there that wanted to do something for Juneteenth.

And just sort of seeing all of these folks in a moment of absolute joy and expressing that joy (crowd applauding and cheering) in unexpected and uncontrolled ways.

(soft music) I just love seeing people like have that experience and have that moment.

The athletes said it was the best event that they'd ever been to as well.

They keep calling me and they're like, "Is next year's event on?

"I wanna start planning to come up there," because they got that gift of energy from the crowd as well.

For it to be a place of community and to give that community a moment of joy is so satisfying and so rich.

(soft music)