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Award of Excellence — Communication Arts 
Honorable Mention — The International Photography Awards 2024 Book Category
Jury Top 5 Selection — The International Photography Awards 2024 Book Category
Silver Winner in Zines And Photo Book/Culture— 2024 International Film Photography Award, Analog Sparks

Timeless photos offer a rare portrait of the jubilant, vibrant, vital, nearly hidden, and now all-but-vanished world of small-town Black rodeos.

Long before Americans began to officially commemorate Juneteenth, in the heat of East Texas, saddles were being cinched, buckles shined, and lassoes adjusted for a day on the Black rodeo circuit in honor of the holiday. In the late 1970s, as they had been doing for generations, Black communities across the region held local rodeos for the talented cowboys and cowgirls who were segregated from the mainstream circuit. It was to these vibrant community events that bestselling Texas writer Sarah Bird, then a young photojournalist, found herself drawn.

In Juneteenth Rodeo, Bird’s lens celebrates a world that was undervalued at the time, capturing everything, from the moment the pit master fired up his smoker, through the death-defying rides, to the last celebratory dance at a nearby honky-tonk. Essays by Bird and sports historian Demetrius Pearson reclaim the crucial role of Black Americans in the Western US and show modern rodeo riders—who still compete on today’s circuit—as “descendants” in a more than two-hundred-year lineage of Black cowboys. A gorgeous tribute to the ropers and riders—legends like Willie Thomas, Myrtis Dightman, Rufus Green, Bailey’s Prairie Kid, Archie Wycoff, and Calvin Greeley—as well as the secretaries, judges, and pick-up men and even the audience members who were as much family as fans, Juneteenth Rodeo ultimately seeks to put Black cowboys and cowgirls where they have always belonged: in the center of the frame.

Junk Drawer: What We Leave Behind explores the personal objects that were once treasured by their owners yet were ultimately consigned to online “junk drawer” sales. Photographer and coeditor Barbara Von Eckardt acquired these random assortments from estate remnants on eBay and has documented their contents through evocative, sepia-toned images. In doing so, she has breathed new life into items that the world had deemed valueless, but that hint at the stories and identities of those who once owned them.

In addition to the photographs, Von Eckardt and coeditor Sander L. Gilman have gathered essays by scholars across disciplines, each offering a unique perspective on how such everyday objects can carry profound meaning. The result is a “junk drawer” of reflections, as varied and thought-provoking as the artifacts themselves. It is a moving testament to the emotional and cultural resonance of ordinary things—and an invitation to look more deeply at the objects surrounding us.