cowboy
No need for a map.
Jack was a miner.
Black lung.
I thought I heard Coltrane.
Maybe it was Patsy Cline.
Looking at and being looked back at.
Naked.
Place is not the point.
What is?
There’s a lot of things I just don’t get.
Sometimes it just is.
cowboy
twenty books & field guide
2004—2021
cowboy is my long look at the American social landscape. Made between 2004 and 2021 while traveling throughout the United States, the work explores the spaces where history, myth, and everyday life converge. Guided by serendipity rather than plan, I followed the photograph wherever it led, discovering that the work was less about place than transformation. Photographs, in rhythm, become a visual poem — a fragmented portrait of America and my experience moving through it.
—theo anderson
structure
books
12 photographs per book
28 pages
10 x 8 inches
pigment prints on archival paper
bound by hand using double wire
boxes
2 presentation boxes
10 books per box
designated cowboy one & cowboy two
field guide (cowboy one)
sequenced in chronological order
recycled anodized aluminum
scratch resistant & archival
9 x 11.5 x2 inches
edition
signed and notated in field guide
2026, seven unique copies
