Faded Icons of the West: The Story Behind the Photography Book

Faded Icons of the West: The Story Behind the Photography Book

Faded Icons of the West began in 1985 with a dare.

I had studied photography in Santa Barbara and planned to move to New York to pursue fashion photography. A last-minute ski trip to Sun Valley changed that plan. After the snow melted, I entered a rodeo queen contest on a date and unexpectedly became Miss Hailey Idaho Days of the Old West Rodeo Queen. It was the first rodeo I had ever attended.

That year introduced me to a world I hadn't expected to photograph. I was initially drawn to the fashion and individuality of the rodeo queens, but soon the horses, cowboys and cowgirls, ranches, rodeos, roadside signs, small towns, and vast landscapes became part of a much larger photographic story.

I have continued photographing the American West ever since. Faded Icons of the West brings together work created from 1985 through 2019, drawn from decades of traveling thousands of miles and documenting the people, places, and changing character of the West.

More Than Three Decades on Film

Much of the work in Faded Icons of the West was photographed on film using 35mm, 2¼, and 4×5 cameras. From spontaneous moments behind the rodeo chutes to portraits, ranch life, roadside Americana, and wide-open landscapes, the different cameras and film formats became part of the visual character of the work.

My background in fashion photography also influenced the way I saw the West. I was interested not only in documenting it, but in its style, color, characters, and unexpected glamour.

The result is both documentary and editorial, my interpretation of the people, places, and visual icons of the American West.

Inside Faded Icons of the West

The 222-page, large-format fine art photography book features more than 200 photographs, selected from a much larger archive created over more than three decades.

The book moves through Frontier, Blue Tone, Neon, Rodeo, Rodeo Queens, Ranch, and Roadside, followed by a behind-the-scenes Making Of section and index.

Together, the chapters move from muted monochromatic and sepia-toned photographs to vivid color, from wide-open landscapes to intimate portraits, rodeo culture, ranch life, and the roadside icons encountered along the way.

For me, Faded Icons of the West is more than a photography book. It is a monograph of a photographer's life on film and a visual record of the West I photographed from 1985 through 2019.

My work in the American West continues today. The West has always been full of contradictions: rugged and glamorous, expansive and intimate, enduring and constantly changing. This book captures one chapter of that ongoing story, preserving not only what the American West looked like, but something of how it felt.

Buy Faded Icons of the West book by Jules Frazier here