Saturday, Feb. 7, 1998

Photos pay tribute to cowboy heritage

Exhibit at King Ranch Museum features images from 1940s and 1990s

By MARY LEE GRANT
Staff Writer

   ``There was only two things the old-time cow-puncher was afraid of: a decent woman and being set afoot.''
   -- Teddy Blue Abbott, ``We Pointed Them North''
   KINGSVILLE -- Cowboys holding lariats laugh and chat in front of the King Ranch stables as the brick building turns gold in a sunrise. The cowboys, photographed in the 1990s, look much as they would have 100 years ago.
   The image is one of 59 photographs of the modern cowboy on display at the King Ranch Museum this month by photographer David R. Stoecklein. The exhibit is entitled ``The Texas Cowboys'' and is sponsored by the American Quarter Horse Heritage Center and Museum in Amarillo, and by the bank MBNA America.
   Stoecklein painstakingly portrays details of the modern cowboy's life, documenting differences in gear, working habits and terrain in different parts of the state.
   Stoecklein, 48, a photographer perhaps best known for his Marlboro advertising campaigns, started out photographing cowboys in Idaho. More recently, he used his camera to capture the day-to-day life of Texas cowboys in the late 1990s.
   He said he found the exhibit, and the accompanying book ``The Texas Cowboys'' with text by Tom B. Saunders IV, exciting to create ``just because it was Texas.''
   ``The beginning of the cattle business was in Texas,'' Stoecklein said in a telephone interview Friday from his home in Ketchum, Idaho. ``And I really enjoyed the ethnic mix in Texas, especially as you get close to the border with the Spanish influence. I'm trying to educate people that there are cultural as well as geographical differences in ranching. Where I come from, in Idaho, you hardly find any Mexican-American cowboys. Yet that is a big part of ranching in Texas.''
   Stoecklein documented the cowboy life and the cultural differences well, said Janeme Toelkes, assistant archivist at the King Ranch Museum.
   ``Cowboys are still out there doing what they've always done, and these photographs show their way of life beautifully,'' Toelkes said.``He went to 23 ranches throughout the state. You can see how different things are throughout the state. One major difference is that South Texas cowboys have always been Hispanic. Then when you get to Victoria you find black cowboys, and in West Texas, it's Anglo cowboys.''
   Reddish Santa Gertrudis cattle roaming through tawny grass, cactus being cleared, and cowboys galloping through vast empty brush country are among the images of South Texas captured in the exhibit.
   The photographs take advantage of slanting beauty of the bright Texas light as it hits wrinkled hands, the ruddy coat of a Hereford calf and the bleached walls of deserted settlers' home.
   Stoecklein shows the vastness of the prairie as clouds race across a West Texas sky, while dark horses run for shelter. He also captures the minute details of Western ranch life -- a cowboy's worn boots, the image of a naked woman emblazoned in silver on a saddle horn, a horse's bit decorated with hearts and scorpions, a saddle back adorned with the image of a tequila bottle.
   The King Ranch was distinctive from other ranches he photographed in several ways, Stoecklein said.
   ``The King Ranch is run like a business, and it is a very well-run business,'' he said. ``But there is also very much a family spirit to it. The way the Klebergs interact with the employees, the school, the people whose families have lived on the ranch for five or six generations, all make it like a huge family. The way they look out for each other and care for each other touched my heart and spirit.''
   He said there isn't much difference between shooting his advertising work of the West -- for Marlboro, Chevrolet, and Copenhagen -- than from taking photos for a book.
   ``The photo itself is a photo, either way,'' Stoecklein said. ``It is the same thing. In the book, I am trying to preserve the history of the ranches. I am trying to tell the truth under some pressure.
   ``But it is really a similar kind of pressure,'' he added, saying that he feels the need to please ranchers just as much as advertising clients. ``Ranch people are very particular that you portray them in ways that are accurate and true to them, so it is very similar to advertising. In both kinds of work, like any artist, I hope to leave a legacy.''
   He said that he views his advertising work as art just as he does his documentary photography, and that the Marlboro ads he shot are important images of the West.
   ``I guess I justify the Marlboro ads in the fact that they are art,'' Stoecklein said. ``I'm not a smoker and I don't want my sons to smoke. I hope the ads haven't gotten any children smoking. I hope the ads are recognized as art. It's the kind of job that it's a hard one to do and a hard one not to do. They want images of the American West and that is what I love to do.
   ``I don't believe that ads cause people to start smoking,'' he said. ``I don't think kids look at my ads and go out and buy cigarettes. I think they reinforce people who already smoke to smoke Marlboros.''
   Stoecklein's photographs are a compelling complement to those in the ranch's permanent collection by famed Life magazine photographer Toni Frissell.
   These black and white photos were taken during five summers in the 1940s in which Frissell visited the King Ranch, Toelkes said. Frissell, who was the pioneer of the fashion shoot in open spaces, brings humanity to the vast landscape as her camera's gaze falls on ranchers, cowboys and their families working and playing on the ranch.
   ``You can really see the differences between this time and that by looking at both sets of photographs,'' Toelkes said. ``In the Frissell photos, everyone was wearing khakis. In the modern photos, they're all wearing Levi's and Wranglers. There is an enormous difference in the cattle too. The evolution of cattle changed drastically as the Santa Gertrudis breed developed.''
   One of the photos by Frissell was taken for a Life magazine issue devoted to ``grandes dames'' of the United States, said Sarita Salinas, an assistant at the museum.
   The wealthy women chosen for the photo shoot chose to pose in their sequined gowns and jewels, Salinas said. All except for crack shot Henrietta Rosa Kleberg, who posed in jeans and chaps reclining in a custom-designed hunting car, aiming a pistol at the horizon as the sun goes down behind her.
   ``She was the only one who didn't dress up, but she ended up getting the center fold,'' Salinas said.
   Stoecklein said he hopes his photos stand up as well as Frissell's have.
   ``She helped preserve the history of the King Ranch at that time,'' Stoecklein said. ``I hope that people will say I captured this period of time just as she did during that period. I hope that the photos will stand the test of time. I hope that years from now, people will say `Boy, when Stoecklein was at the King Ranch, he really did good work.' ''