Brian Morris

I made this portrait of Brian Morris about ten minutes or so after I’d met him.
I was just starting work on a National Geographic book to be titled, “The
American Cowboy in Life and Legend” written by Geographic staff writer, Bart
McDowell. Brian had just ridden in to the headquarters of the Circle A ranch based in a one- bar community of Paradise Valley, Nevada. The Circle A was a cow and calf outfit that at one time ran about 10,000 head carrying the Circle A brand on the left hip. Brian was buckaroo boss to a crew of about a half dozen or so young men. Brian’s brother, Clark was also on the crew. Buckaroo is what a cowboy is called in the Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada country. It’s kind of left over from when the Mexican vaqueros pushed up north into Texas and beyond. “Vaqueros”became “buckaroos.” Over the next year or so I got to know and like Brian. He and his brother were known in the area to be excellent horse breakers, sometimes capturing some of the mustangs that ran wild in their country. You can see the toll of months out on the high desert country in Brian’s face burnished by the sun and the wind.

Brian and I were having a couple of drinks one afternoon at the bar they called
Paradise Hill. He wore his high-topped, hand-made Bleutcher boots and a scruffy wild rag around his neck. We were to move out on a cattle drive the next morning and we were talking about how much of buckarooing was being taken over by modern technology of one sort or another and I asked him, “ Brian, the way everything is going, with more trucks, more fences, more machines being brought in to do the job of man with a horse and a rope, do you ever think you’ll be replaced by a machine?” He looked at me and in that marvelous soft drawl he said, “Bill, they just ain’t come up with nothin’ yet that’ll take as much abuse as a cowboy.”

This flash sale print is a 6” x 9” image on a 9” x 11” paper. It is an archival ink jet print on archival watercolor paper. It is signed in graphite pencil on the front border. It is a perfect gift for a young aspiring photographer or for anyone who loves photography. At a price of only $100.00 it is a bargain not to pass up. All prints are shipped via USPS priority mail. Please be advised that all international custom fees apply and is the responsibility of the buyer to determine those charges. Prints may ship no later than two weeks from order date.