Gun Nation
@ The Half King
Tobin Russell ("pen name" for Tobin Russell Brogunier) lives and works from his home in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. He is a regular contributor to The Fader Magazine and has also been published in The Village Voice, TimeOUT New York, The Economics of Neuroscience and numerous other journals. He works as both studio and documentary photographer for the non-profits Love Heals: The Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education, The Parks Council and the Prospect Park Alliance.
On assignment and independently, Russell photographs uniquely New York and American phenomenon. His early life in Bangor, Maine informs his belief in the extraordinary possibilities of daily life and the people who inhabit it. Images from his three major projects of 2001, The Black Cowboys of Brooklyn, 9/17: Wall Street Goes Back to Work, and The Great Maine Lumberjack Show, are currently online at www.tobinrussell.com.
The Federation of Black Cowboys operates stables and riding grounds in Brooklyn. Their strip of green, Cedar Lane Stable, is nestled in a lowland to the west of South Conduit Avenue and suburban housing, in the shadow of concrete slab high rises. The Black Cowboys can also be found in Prospect Park where some of them board their horses. They have been known to tie their horses up in front of bars in Park Slope while they wet their whistles. (It’s hard to imagine even the most bureaucratic law-enforcement official ticketing such glorious rebellion.)
This posse of Brooklyn cowboys doesn’t herd cattle to market, or work miles of trail. They work in Manhattan offices; they make enough money to board a horse in New York; they drive SUVs for their primary transportation. These modern cowboys train for and conduct rodeos in the memory of the 19th-century Old West where an estimated 25% of the cowboys happened to be black.
The Federation of Black Cowboys and brother organizations all over the country (the most active being in Texas) ride to remind us that for even the whitest of myths – the American cowboy – there is a black equivalent and a shared history. The Federation is a living reminder. More information is available about the Black Cowboys at these websites: www.federationofblackcowboys.com and www.blackcowboys.com. A recent publication edited by Sara R. Massey is Black Cowboys of Texas.
