48th annual Western Heritage Awards honors portrait book on rural life
PHOTOS ‘American Farmer, The Heart of Our Country’ captures essence OF people in agriculture

BY DAVID ZIZZO Comments 0
Published: April 17, 2009

Paul Mobley took the summer off at his cabin in Michigan to escape the thing that wore him out during his years as a commercial photographer in New York: taking pictures.

Thad and Andrea Dockery with their daughter, Laura, at the family's Jeffrey City, Wyoming, ranch. PHOTO BY Paul Mobley/Welcome Books

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the book

"American Farmer: The Heart of Our Country” by Paul Mobley, $31.50 online at amazon.com; signed copies $50 online at welcomebooks.com.

→What: Awards that honor outstanding music, literature, film and television of 2008.

→Where: National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63.

→Tickets: Jingle Jangle Mingle, 5:30 to 7:30 tonight, $25; awards banquet, 6 p.m. Saturday, $150 for nonmembers and $130 for members.

→Information and reservations: 478-2250, ext. 219.

Sand Springs resident featured

A photo of Bret Mock, a Sand Springs rancher and saddlemaker, is among the more than 200 in the book "American Farmer, The Heart of Our Country,” but not the one he would have picked.

"It looks like I’m drunk or something,” Mock said. "My wife and everybody got a big chuckle out of it.”

Mock, who’s name is incorrectly listed in the book as "Brett Moor,” said he figures photographer Paul Mobley was probably "looking for a certain look.” Mock, who runs a few cows and horses on his 1,000 acres and owns a western store, thinks his photo is "not a very good cowboy picture."

But he added, "I’m not an artist. He (Mobley) was looking for a certain look.”

Overall, Mock, one of three Oklahomans in "American Farmer,” was impressed with the book, which he said depicted "the whole gauntlet of rural life.”

"He done a good job on what he was looking for,” he said. "The book is really neat.”

David Zizzo, STAFF WRITER

Then, he saw some farmers hanging around outside a coffee shop.

"I just looked at their faces and thought, ‘I have to take their picture,’” he said. "It was a kind of rebirth of my photo career.”

Four years and more than 100,000 miles crisscrossing America later, Mobley figures he has captured the essence of rural life in a photo book. "American Farmer, The Heart of Our Country,” a collection of more than 200 portraits of farmers and ranchers in their native habitat, along with 45 profiles by writer Katrina Fried, has been selected for a Wrangler Award by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

The Wrangler is "like winning an Oscar,” museum spokeswoman Shayla Simpson said. Mobley’s book was selected from among seven entries in the photo book category of the literary division, she said. It will be presented at the museum Saturday during the 48th annual Western Heritage Awards ceremony.

Mobley spent the rest of that summer four years ago photographing every farmer and rancher in Glen Arbor, Mich. Feeling re-energized, he returned to work in New York, where a publisher decided Mobley should do a book focusing on farmers.

To find subjects, Mobley contacted American Farm Bureau representatives in each state before he visited. Then, he said, "I hit the road.”

Most subjects were reluctant at first, so he’d sit and talk with them for a while. He’d look around to see what caught his eye for a backdrop, which, with all the rustic atmosphere of farms, was not difficult. But it was the people — their real personality — he was really after. "I never let the backdrops overtake the portrait of them.”

The only rule, he told them, was to wear what they wear every day; no new flannel shirts or crisp jeans. "I tried to shoot people the way they were.”

Most did everything they could to help. Like the beekeeper in Hondo, Texas. Despite the cold, rainy weather that made her bees "out of their minds,” the woman stood in a tent swarming with the angry critters as Mobley snapped one of his most memorable photos.

She never moved a muscle, despite getting stung a dozen times, Mobley said. She just wanted Mobley to be happy with the photos, she told him.

"That says it all,” he said.

"I did not know one thing about ranching or farming before I started this book,” he said. "I fell in love with these people so instantly.”