ArtTalk – Ron Tarver

ArtTalk is back!

Black Cowboys are having a moment with Beyone’s Cowboy Carter, Pharrell Williams’ Louis Vuitton American Western FW24 Collection and David Oyelowo's Lawmen: Bass Reeves. The trending subject is nothing new for photographer Ron Tarver who grew up up Oklahoma. Black cowboys were an ordinary part of his life. Tarver himself rode horses, went to rodeos, spent summer days on his cousin's ranch, or working on local farms. His grandfather, Thomas Wilson, was a working cowboy in the 1940s.

When Tarver moved to Philadelphia in 1983, he was surprised by how uninformed people were about Black cowboys. The revelation spurred his dedication to photographing Black cowboy culture, including on assignments for National Geographic and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Now Tarver has published The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America. (George F. Thompson Publishing, 2024). From ranches to city streets, Tarver’s photographs reveal the beauty, romance, and visual poetry of Black cowboys throughout the country. The book sold out in less than one month. We’ll talk with Tarver about his new book, photography in the age of ai and alternative facts.

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Ron Tarver earned a BA in Journalism and Graphic Arts from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He is an Associate Professor of Art at Swarthmore College. Before joining the faculty at Swarthmore, he had been a staff photojournalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 32years, where he shared the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his work on a series documenting school violence in the Philadelphia public school system. Tarver was nominated for three Pulitzers and honored with awards from World Press Photos, the Sigma Delta Chi Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Profession National Press Photographers Association/University of Missouri Pictures of the Year. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Ebony, Jet, Huffington Post, and Hyperallergic. He is a co-author of the book We WereThere: Voices of African American Veterans. Tarver has received Guggenheim and Pew Fellowships, as well as grants and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and two Independence Foundation Fellowships. Tarver's work is included in collections at the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Oklahoma History Center, and many other corporate and private collections. His work is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery in New York and Grand Image in Seattle.

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