Hailing from Kansas City, Kansas, photographer Ivan McClellan grew up in a working-class neighbourhood that was a distinct mixture of urban and country.
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“There were lowriders and gang members on our block and the street would get lit up at night by police helicopters,” McClellan remembers. But every summer, he and his sister would run around the two-hectare field that lay behind their house, eating blackberries and catching lightning bugs. “Some of our friends at school had cows and chickens and we’d see people trotting down the street on horses. I never thought of our upbringing as country, or the Black folks around us as cowboys.”
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That all changed in 2015, when documentary filmmaker Charles Perryinvited McClellan to the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the only touring African-American rodeo in the world. The event was named after Bill Pickett (1870-1932), a Black cowboy who got his start performing in turn-of-the-century Wild West shows and early Hollywood films. Pickett famously invented bulldogging (steer wrestling) and became the first Black person honoured by the National Rodeo Hall of Fame. Founded in 1984, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo brings its iconic celebration of Black cowboy culture to every corner of the country.
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