Photographer Rae Sowards is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘The Other American Cowboy’. To see Rae’s body of work, click on any photograph.

The Other American Cowboy is a photographic narrative series that explores the lack of African American subjects in traditional American landscapes. Being a biracial African American, the idea came from a personal question I have had since a child. Where do I belong? In The Other American Cowboy project, I combine iconic American Landscapes with African American environmental portraiture. I am in search of a nostalgic American scene found in White Hollywood film and stills. I started to imagine myself in the images I took. However, being African American I knew I did not fit into the idea of the quintessential American character. As an artist I have the power to create, and I am creating a project where I belong.

This series was photographed between 2011- 2013 in the South and Midwest part of the United States.

Rae was born and raised in Dundalk; a working-class port town located outside the city limits of Baltimore. Her backyard was a playground of towering factory stacks puffing chemicals from the local steel mill. She knew beauty in the grandeur of industrial-sized unpacking cranes. At sunset, their metal necks would shine and reflect off the Chesapeake and dissolve into the smoky orange glow of the sky. This is where she first learned that beauty and peril can be one in the same. It was with this revelation she yearned to capture and hold space for the beauty and peril that is life with the hope to learn and love through it all.

All images and text © Rae Sowards