Photography

Marfa, Filtered through Instagram

Dallas-based photographer Allison V. Smith took over Texas Monthly's Instagram account during her trip to Marfa this weekend. Here are some highlights from her trip.

Laura Wilson’s Studio

The Dallas photographer shows us where she works.

Pretty Ugly

Why a lavish two-volume attack on the border fence, with photos by Maurice Sherif, misses the mark.

Light in the Darkness

The title of James Evans’s new series of Big Bend photographs is “The Camera Never Sleeps.” It doesn’t matter, apparently, that the photographer does.

Dirt and Light

James H. Evans has been photographing Big Bend for twenty years. But never before has it looked so, well, big.

PORTFOLIO ONE • Home and Heritage

Most modern Texans are far removed from the land and legend of the West, but as the photos prove, they cherish it still.

Dog Ghosts and Bottle Trees

A new collection of Keith Carter’s photographs captures the magical mojo of East Texas.

Magic Kingdom

A visual tour of my beautiful, mysterious, surreal corner of East Texas.

David Lee Garza, Acordeonista

The moment that members of the tejano band David Lee Garza y Los Musicales saw a poster by San Antonian John Dyer, they knew they had found the photographer for their next album. “We wanted more than just a face on a cover,” says bassist Richard Garza, “and his poster

Holy Smoke

For photographer Wyatt McSpadden, the barbecue joints of Texas are soot-stained temples of meat and their pitmasters solemn keepers of an old-time religion.

Wyatt’s World

Thirty years after he took his first photograph for us—of charming kook Stanley Marsh 3—contributing photographer Wyatt McSpadden looks back on his extraordinary career and tells the stories behind some of our favorite images.

A Stately House: A Photographic Portrait

Even on her one-hundredth birthday, the Texas Capitol looks good in places other building don’t even have places.

A Q&A With Justin Carrasquillo

The Los Angeles–based photographer spent more than twenty days driving all across the state and tells us what he saw.

Exercise of Flower

Seven Texas photographers do their best to reinvent that time-honored, heartwarming, slightly cheesy tradition: the bluebonnet photo.

The American Wall

Read an excerpt from a new book by Maurice Sherif.

Mark Seliger

“I always approach it as if I’m going to take the picture and, for whatever reason, that’s it. There won’t be another chance.”

The Unpublished Dan Winters

As one of the country’s top photographers, he’s captured on film hundreds if not thousands of people over the past quarter of a century. These ten portraits have never before been seen, but they’re among his favorites. Ours too.

Field Work

Andrew Lichtenstein spent six years taking pictures inside Texas’ vast prison system. The result is an anthropological study of a brutal culture.

The Searcher

Photographer Kurt Markus spent years tracking down modern working cowboys for his new book, ‘Cowpuncher.’ He corralled the genuine article at several Texas spreads.

Built for Speedy

RICHARD SPEEDY wasn’t planning on working last January when he took his fifth trip to Mexico’s Copper Canyon, but he happened to be on the same trek as senior editor Joe Nick Patoski, who needed someone to document his crossing of the vast and brutal expanse (see “Let’s Get

Deep in the Heart of Exum

The Exum files: No one questions her drive.

A Wild Life

A terrific and prolific photographer remembered.

Leon’s Lens

In the Central Texas town of Seguin, Leon Kubala has been documenting life and death for more than fifty years, one picture at a time.

Anntastic!

Ann Richards ads it up.

War Games

In the suddenly trendy world of World War II wannabes, these Texans are big guns.

PORTFOLIO THREE • Life and Death

In the last quarter century, we have viewed the state with anger, humor, sorrow, and compassion, and these images do the same.

PORTFOLIO TWO • Fame and Fortune

There is one star on Texas’ flag but many in its firmament. The portraits showcase Texans who skyrocketed to celebrity or success.

Behind the Lines

Why our pictures are worth a thousand words.

El Circo

As in Hanoi and Moscow, the circus in Mexico is no three-ring extravaganza. It’s one of the grittiest shows on earth.

What a Drag

Celebrity portraiture often requires that the subject be ready for anything. An imaginative photographer like Houston’s Pam Francis will conjure up unusual settings and costumes to best evoke her subject’s true nature, as when she lured oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt and his German shepherd to the roof of a building

Hail, Mary Ellen

For thirty years Mary Ellen Mark has made her name as a documentary photographer by not shying away from tough assignments, whether that means traveling for six months in India to shoot circus folk or infiltrating the world of runaway kids in Seattle. Chronicling life at Abilene’s House of Yahweh

Captions and Comments

Left: Untitled, 1993. Right: Beware, 1994. The old stereotypes have only been repackaged, Charles says. Right: Clockwise from top left, four paintings from the Liberty Bros. Permanent Daily Circus series: Blue Period, 1995, Oop’s, 1995, Desperados Leap for Life, 1996, and Smiles, 1996. “I’m trying to be as honest

Marathon Man

In 1988, when James H. Evans was in his mid-thirties, he left behind a successful photography studio in Austin and moved to remote Marathon, where he took a job as a cook at the Gage Hotel and shot pictures on the side. “Everyone thought I was nuts,” he says. “I

Range Rover

After fifty years of traveling the Southwest, ranch photographer Frank Reeves left behind a vast body of work and unforgettable portraits of the cowboy’s way of life.

Running With the Big Dogs

From Fred Gipson’s fictional Old Yeller to A&M mascot Reveille and Lyndon Johnson’s beleaguered beagles, dogs have always reigned as Texans’ pets of choice. The long line of distinguished dog lovers includes John Graves of Glen Rose, Texas’ writer emeritus, and acclaimed Beaumont photographer Keith Carter, who joined forces

Grand Parent

Nature photography is just part of Laurence Parent’s nature. The 37-year-old Austin-area resident, who took the pictures that accompany this month’s article on Hueco Tanks State Historical Park (“Social Climbers”), has long been known for his landscape work, from wildflower close-ups to desert vistas. “My father was in the

¡Bravo!

A new exhibit in San Marcos pays homage to Manuel Alvarez Bravo, the grandfather of Mexican photography, and the generations of fotógrafos who followed his lead.

Gilt Trip

Andrew Eccles has photographed plenty of 24-karat celebrities for Texas Monthly, but his session with Lou Diamond Phillips was a truly golden experience. “In an industry that’s marked by jaded people,” Eccles says, “Lou was a breath of fresh air. He’s down to earth, talkative, enthusiastic—an incredibly sweet guy.”In his

The Inside Story: Sure Shot

Dallas photographer Laura Wilson has made up for lost time. The 55-year-old Massachusetts native is a regular contributor to Texas Monthly, for whom she has shot portraits of Laredo debutantes and Mullin footballers, and she has also worked for The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the London Sunday

Where the Wild Things Are

One of the country’s top photographers traveled around his home state to capture these stunning portraits of exotic animals on display.

Good-bye to a Friend

He braved dangerous criminals, stalked wild wolves, waded into floodwaters, and chased a hurricane down the Texas coast into Mexico, but in a cruel turn of fate he was felled by a tiny insect. Photographer Doug Milner died November 13 after suffering an allergic reaction to a wasp sting at

Former Burlesque Queen Dixie Evans, 1994

Mammatocumulus Clouds, Hays County, 1993

Cattle Auction, San Angelo, 1940

In no other state were the turbulent thirties documented as exhaustively as in Texas, where Farm Secirity Administration photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee took more than five thousand pictures of Depression and pre-war life . When the agency became the Office of War Information, some of its

Nanci Griffifth and Guitar, 1994

Black and White World

Life as it really was in Texas’ African American community, as seen through the eyes of almost forgotten photographers.

Shooting Stars

With wit and grit, Amarillo-born photographer Mark Seliger persuades reluctant celebrities to show their true selves.

The Cowboy Boot Book

This fall, photographer Jim Arndt and Western props supplier Tyler Beard visited the annual event in Burnet to chew the fat with many of the craftsmen featured in The Cowboy Boot Book (Peregrine Smith Books), their pictorial guide to fancy footgear. Arndt and Beard have dressed Western

Dead Again

Get your masks on; put on your dancing shoes. It’s time for Mexico’s Day of the Dead, one of the liveliest celebrations around.

Bull Snake on a Sofa

When James H. Evans moved to Marathon in 1988, he was struck by its abundant wildlife. “Anything unattended will be overrun with animals,” says the photographer. Evans takes up that theme in his “Lucille” series, focusing on a house vacated by the death of an elderly friend of that name.