Whether she’s photographing creative titans like Larry McMurtry and Donald Judd, great Texas ranchers such as Watt Matthews, or a parade of oxcarts in Oaxaca, Mexico, Laura Wilson has a unique ability to capture the essence of her subjects. Growing up in a small town in Massachusetts, Wilson never imagined she would one day move to Texas and, starting in 1979, spend six years assisting Richard Avedon as he photographed the American West. As a child, she loved looking at old family photos but didn’t think there was a career path for her behind the lens of a camera. Anyone can snap a picture, but the artistry can rarely be taught. “You have to have a point of view,” Wilson says.
Last fall, Wilson released her eighth book, Roaming Mexico, which chronicles 30 years of her travels from the country’s northern border with the U.S. to the southern border with Guatemala. An accompanying exhibit at the Meadows Museum in Dallas ran through January. Wilson has also photographed her famous actor sons, Owen, Luke, and Andrew, and captured behind-the-scenes images on the set of some of Wes Anderson’s films, including Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited.
Despite these accolades, it’s not always easy to coax a subject to sit for her. She spent nearly a decade trying to get McMurtry to pose for a photo that would end up in her 2022 book The Writers: Portraits. Along with her talent, Wilson’s tenacity has made her one of the modern era’s most respected documentary photographers.
Wilson, who was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame in 2019, has no intention of slowing down. “It really is an amazing thing,” she says of photography. “It’s an attempt at stopping time.”
Texas Highways: You first became interested in photographs as a child. Did you imagine taking pictures could lead to a career?
Laura Wilson: I never thought of it as a career path when I was looking at our family photographs, but later I began looking at the very best photographers whose work appeared in magazines or in a yearly book called U.S. Camera. I looked at those, and at Life Magazine and photographers like Robert Capa, David Douglas Duncan, and W. Eugene Smith—all the great photographers of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. I never thought I could be a photographer myself, though, because I thought you had to know chemistry and the science of photography.
TH: When did that change?
LW: I went to Connecticut College, a small college for women that was no-nonsense. I was a painting major and an English major, and I always drew. I started to understand that with a better camera, you could take better pictures. I got a good camera when I was around 18 and that really set me on a course to think I could take this seriously. But photography wasn’t taken seriously by most people in the art world then. A strong background in literature allowed me to know what a good story is and how to tell a good story, and that ability crosses over into photography.
TH: Do you remember some of your earliest subjects?
LW: I always took pictures of people in my community in New England. Every March, a railroad car from Missouri would ship horses to a nearby town. They were sold as they came off the train cars. This was a very exciting time for us kids. I remember taking pictures of that and of this horseman who was a wonderful New England figure named Stanley Briggs. Those pictures would go in the drawer with the family photographs.
TH: You moved to Texas in 1966 when your husband’s job transferred him to Dallas. What was that transition like as a lifelong New Englander?
LW: We moved a few years after the assassination [of President John F. Kennedy]. So much of the country had negative feelings about Dallas at that time, but we were immediately welcomed. The people were so kind, openhearted, and generous. We thought, What’s the point of rushing back to New England where things aren’t as fun as they are here? It was a nice way of life and a good place to raise a family.
TH: What were some of the first images that caught your eye when you moved here?
LW: One of the first things was in Grapevine, where they had quarter horse races every weekend. I remember turning around in the stands one afternoon and there was a fantastic woman, probably in her late 30s. She had a great Texas look. I thought, I hope she doesn’t mind me taking her photograph, and she gave this bemused look into the camera. She knew what I was seeing, so in a second a snapshot became an unspoken collaboration.
TH: What was it like working with Richard Avedon for six years when he was photographing In the American West?
LW: I learned so much working with Richard Avedon, especially his way of approaching people. I had never met him, and as a young photographer I was completely in awe of him. We were walking around the coliseum in Sweetwater, and he said, “Pick out a person you think I should photograph.” I thought to myself, Oh gosh, you’re the famous photographer, you tell me. What he did was push me from the first hour we worked together to be able to look and see, judge quickly, and decide who was worthy of a portrait.
TH: Where did that experience lead you?
LW: I began working for magazines and newspapers like the Sunday Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. I loved seeing different ways of life and discovering what was happening politically, culturally, and economically both in Europe and the United States. I went to photograph people in Hollywood, and The New York Times Magazine sent me to Waco when the [Branch Davidians] disaster happened. The Sunday Times sent me to Marfa for a week to photograph Donald Judd. Can you imagine? That would never happen today.
TH: What was he like?
LW: Judd was famously cranky and crotchety, but I liked him immediately, even though he was not necessarily cooperative on the first day. On our last day together, we flew out on the same small plane to Dallas, and we were practically the only two people on the plane. He said he didn’t feel well and that he picked up a bug because he drank out of a stock tank. Within two months, he was dead. I was the last person to photograph him.
TH: Did it really take you nearly a decade to get Larry McMurtry to let you photograph him?
LW: Yes. I wrote him a brief, nice letter and he immediately wrote back, which I thought was a good sign. But he said: “I’m sorry to be disobliging, but I don’t want to be photographed. I’m afraid it’s as simple as that.” I wrote back right away telling him I completely understood, so I really had to keep him in my eyeline for maybe 10 years, until he finally agreed. I think what happens is that if a person is at the top of their game, it’s always an intrusion to come in and try and photograph them. They don’t need the attention. But once they see the seriousness with which you are working and what you are trying to accomplish, they respond to that.
TH: Your latest book, Roaming Mexico, is the result of three decades of travel to the country. When did you know it would become a book?
LW: I had done maybe four books in four years, and they took so much energy and time. I stopped and looked at the Mexico work and thought there were some substantive pictures, and I wondered if they would hold up in a book or an exhibit, so I began editing them. I had photographs of a yearly festival in southern Oaxaca each May where 100 oxcarts decorated in reeds and grasses from the fields go through town. It was a fantastic thing to see, and I know it’s going to disappear. It may have already disappeared. You can’t go to Mexico without experiencing a tremendous visual jolt. It’s an amazing country.
TH: You were the set photographer on Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson’s first film, co-written with your son, Owen, and featuring your other sons, Luke and Andrew. Were you surprised when you first saw it?
LW: It was four Texas boys who didn’t have their sea legs under them. Only one out of the four had graduated from college. We were wondering what was going to happen to them. And then they say they’re writing a movie. Are you crazy? We didn’t have any connections to the movie business. Owen and Wes showed us a 13-minute short they had done, and it was great. I thought, Well, where did that come from? There was an energy to it. I didn’t know anything about moviemaking, but I knew visually what was interesting. You can’t teach that.
TH: What are your favorite places in Texas now?
LW: I’ve always responded to West Texas and the border. I love Fort Davis and Amarillo. The open country, which is so different from where I grew up, is what excites me. That’s what drew me to photographing Texas and still does. I’ve been here 60 years now, and it’s still an optimistic place with possibilities and bright horizons.
