"an sako kun waran sulod dili mag tindog" (an empty sack will not stand)
My Masbate Rodeo experience had started when I had agreed to assist a photographer who wanted to document the annual festival in the Bicol Region in the Philippines. The assignment was cancelled but I decided I needed a quick detour and didn't cancel my flight. I was unsure whether I had a place to stay during the fiesta. I was greeted at the airport by cowboys and cowgirls. Everybody was living the subculture. I was allowed to stay in a small room at a public high school where I roomed with a cowboy from Boracay. For a week, without a purpose or end goal in mind, I lived with rodeo teams who had traveled as far as a thousand kilometers for a chance at a small prize pot and fame. I was told teams from Mindanao had traveled for days by land and sea to reach Masbate. The rodeo events at the Rodeo Masbateno are similar to events I have only seen on travel shows documenting the cowboy subculture in America, I never knew this existed here in the Philippines, much less on an island. The photographs in this series represent the very surface of this subculture in the Philippines. The Rodeo Masbateno is the National Rodeo Finals of the Philippines and there are other rodeo events in other parts of the Philippines to determine which teams make the cut.
With funding, I hope to be able to follow teams as they travel across the Philippines and compete in different rodeo events. I also plan to live among the ranch hands who make up the teams at the National Rodeo. I have already wrestled a calf, but I don't have a photo of that, it was a crazy experience. :)
