" Black Cowboys in America" with Ron Tarver and Jordan Bullock
Join Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Ron Tarver and racehorse trainer Jordan Bullock for an in-depth conversation on the origins and evolution of Tarver’s Black Cowboys in America series. First developed as a 1992 photo essay for The Philadelphia Inquirer, it became an award-winning book in 2024, inspiring the exhibition, Black Cowboys in America: Photographs by Ron Tarver.
The series began in North Philadelphia, where Tarver met a young Bullock at his father’s White House Stables. It later expanded westward, tracing Black cowboy culture across the country and reconnecting Tarver with his Oklahoma roots. Together, Tarver and Bullock share photographs and personal reflections on a lifelong journey shaped by community, mentorship, and a deep commitment to preserving this vital cultural history.
Jordan Bullock is a Philadelphia-based racehorse trainer whose work is rooted in the city’s tradition of Black urban horsemanship. Raised in North Philadelphia, he grew up at White House Stables in Brewerytown, where his father, George “Bumsey” Bullock, was a central figure in the local horse community. Bullock first gained attention as a young subject in Ron Tarver’s early 1990s documentation of Philadelphia’s Black cowboys, later published as The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America. Today, he trains at Parx Racetrack, continuing a lifelong dedication shaped by family, community, and enduring cultural traditions.
Ron Tarver, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer, has distinguished himself in the fields of photojournalism and fine-art photography on the staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer for thirty-two years. Tarver’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over thirty solo and fifty group exhibitions. It is included in many private, corporate, and museum collections, including Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, and many other corporate and private collections. Tarver is the recipient of a John S. Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Currently, he is an associate professor of art at Swarthmore College.
Image: Ron Tarver (b. 1957). Horse Whisperer (Stillwater, OK), 1993. Pigment ink print. Courtesy of Ron Tarver.
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