Luke Gilford’s Celebrity Photographs of Gay Cowboys
Hyperallergic, August 8, 2022
Luke Gilford grew up around rodeos (his dad was a competitor and judge), but at some point in his youth, he started drifting away from what he described as an “inherently homophobic” environment. Now a successful celebrity photographer in LA, Gilford had put his lasso viewing days behind him until he discovered the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA). I talked to Gilford and a competitor about the 40-year-old organization’s community, the coopting of Western aesthetics, and the IGRA’s expression of a Western truism: There have always been gay cowboys.
Elaine Velie 