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FLASH BACK
me from a degree in Studying photojournalism at UT led t, with stops at prison anthropology to the life of a novelis Library along the way rodeos, beauty salons, and the LBJ

BY SARAH BIRD
Facing page: Taken on Congress in 1974 in front of the old Lerners. This page: For some reason, I chose to learn how to use a ash by dressing my very good sport of a roommate, Cathy Staph Anderson, as some Swinging London/ Carnaby Street fantasy and posing her by a Dumpster.

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H E B E S T T H I N G T H AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F T E XA S E V E R D I D F O R M E WA S TO S T I C K A CAMERA IN FRONT OF MY FACE AND OFFICIALLY JUSTIFY WHAT I ALREADY WAS: AN OBSERVER, A RECORDER, A VOYEUR, AN INTROVERT DRIVEN BY INSATIABLE CURIOSITY.
It was the summer of 1974. I had a freshly minted B.A. in anthropology from the University of New Mexico, a temporary job at the LBJ Library that was about to end, and a boyfriend who was leaving me for Scientology. I needed a plan. I took to wandering the campus on my lunch hour, as awed by the power and the might and the marble as a peasant from the provinces come to Imperial Rome. The journalism building called to me with its air conditioning and drink machines. I ambled around the cool, empty halls sipping my Diet DP and vaguely fantasizing about being a girl reporter. On the third oor, I stopped to peruse a bulletin board. As I was considering whether to pluck a phone number off of an ad for Roommate Needed or one from the equally plausible Passenger to Seattle Wanted, a thin, cracking voice from an unseen source startled me, May I help you? It was summer break. The only open door on the entire oor led to what Id taken to be a broom closet. I peeked in. It was a small, windowless ofce upholstered from oor to ceiling with teetering piles of paper. At its center was a slight, elderly man, his pronounced buckteeth displayed in a friendly smile. His manner was courtly in an old-fashioned way, more Southern than Texan, more country than city. The old gent seemed to have all the time in the world and an inexplicable eagerness to spend every second of it chatting with a clueless stranger from New Mexico. I took him to be some sort of emeritus presence, a former professor so beloved that he was allowed to linger long after retirement. Though I left feeling as if Id had an audience with a skinny Buddha, I didnt take the application hed given me for his program seriously. I stuffed it in my backpack and forgot about it. Until three days later. I was at work on the fth oor of the LBJ Library, unloading big brown boxes of miscellaneaphotos of Lynda Birds makeover for her date with George Hamilton; letters from schoolchildren outraged that President Johnson had lifted his beagles, Him and

Above: In my rst photo

class at UT, we were all issued Polaroids and went off to Pease Park to click off shots of each other. Right: This cowgent epitomizes cowboy cool at an Old-timers Rodeo in Cameron, Texas. In rodeo broken bones and blood are worn as proudly as license-plate size championship belt buckles.

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Her, up by their ears; recipes for Lady Birds Bunkhouse Chilicataloguing the contents and repacking them into mandarin red buckram boxes for display. I had just nished cataloguing the last of several red boxes that Id lled with small, heartshaped boxes holding pieces of Lynda Birds wedding cakelong since dried into leathery puckswhen I opened a box packed with photos of the First Lady. And there, right on top, was the skinny Buddha himself receiving an award from the First Lady. I quickly dug that application out of my backpack, applied, and was awarded a fellowship to the graduate program directed by one of the legends of Texas journalism, DeWitt C. Reddick.

The very rst semester, though, I discovered my big problem with journalism: facts. I would go out to cover a story and return knowing everything about my subject: why she and her husband were breaking up, how bad her ragweed allergy was, and how much she hated pimiento cheese, but not, necessarily, her last name. Or what was in the dreary bill she was sponsoring. Photojournalism, however, was another story altogether. A story where the facts reshuffled themselves with every click of the shutter, where no one could ever say theyd been misquoted, and you owned whatever corner of the world you could put a frame around. I was electried by a sense of discovery. Of capturing places, people, moments, that no one had ever seen

Left: I took this image of a trusty at the Huntsville Prison Rodeo in 1974. I gave it a sepia tint since even back then this scene seemed archaic and like something out of a past that should have been relegated to crumbling history books. Above: Cowgirl legends, Margie and Alice Greenough, introduced me to a whole new dimension of the word tough. They inspired me when I was creating the characters in Virgin of the Rodeo.

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The photographers who gathered to develop prints...reminded me of the crews my navigator-father ew with during the Cold War. Aggressive, funny, glamorous, lled with bravado. WE WERE SHOOTERS. WE WERE BADASSES.
Top right: This photo is poignant for me, not just because the Diamond L Arena outside of Houston is long gone, but because, after I carefully set this shot up with the friends I had made over months of photographing and interviewing, after I calculated f-stops and shutter speeds, and gured out how to bounce the ash off the low ceiling, a fairly famous photographer stepped in right behind me and took this exact shot. I even helped him with his ash settings. His photo was later exhibited to some acclaim.

before. Certainly not in quite the way that I saw them. The thought that popped into my head most frequently was a gleeful, No one is going to believe this shit! Best of all, for a shy person, a camera gave me permission and a reason to talk to anyone. Delighted with this new superpower, I undertook as one of my rst student projects photographing shoppers at Hancock Center, a nearby mall. I immediately learned that my subjects stiffened into taxidermy poses when I asked if I could take their picture. But all I had to do was inquire if I could photograph their sunglasses, or cool trucker hat, or cute earrings and they instantly relaxed into proud possessors of stylish items, attered by every click of my shutter.

Back at the University of New Mexico, Id dreamed of being an anthropologist studying exotic cultures, and now I was. A camera was my passport to anywhere I wanted to go. And there were so many places I wanted to go. Wurstfest, a quinceaera, the snow monkey ranch in south Texas, shows at the Armadillo World Headquarters, the dayroom at the state mental hospital, an old lady beauty salon, and rodeos. Especially rodeos. My rst was the Huntsville Prison Rodeo where I sat in front of a row of French sailors in their Donald Duck uniforms muttering, Quelle barbare! to each other. It was barbaric, and I was hooked. Not on the actual sport but on the unique subcultures that blossomed around what I came to think of as renegade rodeos: prison, police, kids, womens, gay, African-American, charreadas, and oldtimers. I even heard about a nudist rodeo held, naturally, in California, but I never got close enough to that one to learn the true meaning of bareback riding. To say nothing of rawhide. I found a home in the j-school in the shadow of the big, rusty monolith on Guadalupe and 26th, but I found a clubhouse in the darkroom located then in the basement of the geography building. There is a Christmas-morning moment that digital photographers will never experience of rushing your lm to the lab, loading it onto canisters, swishing, swirling, then holding the negatives up to the amber glow of the safe light. Was the exposure right? The shutter speed? Focus? Had you captured the magic youd seen through your view nder? Was it there? The photographers who gathered to develop printseach one its own wonder of chemical baths and precise sweeps of lightreminded me of the crews my navigator-father ew with during the Cold War. Aggressive, funny, glamorous, filled with bravado. We were shooters. We were badasses. If you needed to be inside the rodeo arena, on the dirt, when they turned out the bull, then thats where you were. Our photos were the prize catches we brought back to the darkroom, and each one was a challenge to the others to step up their game. My group had especially talented members who went on to win Pulitzers, own their own studios, and ll the pages of every important publication in the country with their work. But the clock was running out on my fellowship and Journalism, unsoftened by Photo-, threatened again: my masters thesis was due. It was made clear to me that my extensive forays into the graphic world would not be tolerated for this nal project. I wasnt ready, however, to emerge from the amber glow back into the harsh light of facts. Through some marvel of academic double-speak, I managed to get a proposal approved that would let me continue photographing at my latest visual paradise, the Hyde Park Beauty Salon. If I were ever to design a writing program, I doubt I could come up with a better project than my beauty salon thesis. It brought together everything Id learned in anthropologyguring out how a culture affects an individualand photographyfocusing on the details that tell

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that individuals unique story. I had a sense of urgency about capturing this world, since the owner had conded to me that she was selling the shop because she was getting too old to run it and because so many of the clients shed had for decades were dying. Heres how I described the salon I called the Princess Beauty Shoppe: The Princess Beauty Shoppe is a cozy, tacky place cluttered with the affectionate debris of 40 years. A tray of brownies brought by a patron combine their sweet chocolatey smell with the ammonia stick of hair dyes, straighteners, and permanents. The shelves are lined with dusty jars and bottles lled with beauty products from another era. The chairs in the shop are lled by

I D I S C OV E R E D M Y B I G P R O B L E M WITH JOURNALISM: FACTS. I would go out to cover a story and return knowing everything about my subject: why she and her husband were breaking up, how bad her ragweed allergy was, and how much she hated pimiento cheese, but not, necessarily, her last name.
the users of those products who come once a week to have their hair washed, rolled, dried, and teased into the styles theyve always worn: beehives; a bouffant pageboy; perms as curly and tight as poodle fur. Just say were an old lady shop, states the owner, Miss Faith, in a proud apology. The salon did close, eventually replaced by a custom-framing shop, and I went on to discover the perfect synthesis of all my impulses to capture worlds and people in ction. I put aside my camera and never set foot in a darkroom again. And now, except for rareed art photography, darkrooms are gone as well. Chemicals, lm, and light replaced by pixels. But sometimes when the writing is going especially well, when it takes me somewhere I could never have gone on my own, an exhilaration that seems bathed in a familiar amber glow overtakes me, and I think again, No one is going to believe this shit!
Clockwise from top: It was so important for me to capture

something true about the women of the Hyde Park Beauty Salon. I was affronted by the school of photography that eventually led to Richard Avedons Faces of the West. I found it demeaning and lazy to rip your subjects out of their environments and slam them into yours; The regulars all had standing appointments to get their hair washed and set and sprayed into place for the coming week. Mostly, though, they came for each other; My thesis looked at how beauty operators functioned as therapists for women whod never go to see a therapist. While the permanent wave solution sets, these two friends share the stories and secrets that they could only have told at the Hyde Park Beauty Salon.

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