Trillium Media Services

Every year some of the best mustaches in America arrive in Elko, Nev., for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Matthew Ginn made a series of portraits of the mustaches and interviewed their owners for a project called Mustaches of the American West. With newer technology and a contemporary eye, Matthew has remastered the original portraits and added some new ones to the collection. Click the thumbnails to view the images.

We put value in things that last, so it’s not so much what’s going to be popular tomorrow [that matters], it’s what’s been popular for a hundred years. —Douglas Krause, saddle maker

About the project:

Mustaches of various shapes and sizes have been worn by men for at least 4500 years. From the thinnest pencil mustache to the widest handlebar, probably every conceivable configuration of hair has been worn on the upper lip. Some styles are so distinctive that they become a defining part of the image of their wearer: think of Charlie Chaplain, Groucho Marx, or Salvador Dalí, for example, and their mustached face springs immediately to mind.

Big, bold mustaches have long been associated with the American cowboy. While such facial hair would be out of place in contemporary urban society, it is a normal—even expected—part of the culture of the rural west. Part rebel, part conformist, these men wear bold mustaches to be distinctive, ironically uniting them with their peers. All of the men agree that it’s not necessary, but none are willing to shave it.

A century ago, the American economy was dominated by agriculture, and most Americans lived a rural lifestyle. In today’s increasingly urbanized society, the cowboys are among the last holdouts of a previous age. Whether their lifestyle begets their philosophy or vice versa, tradition and conservative values rank highly in the minds of rural westerners. As rancher and musician R.W. Hampton puts it, “It’s a very traditional lifestyle. We ride the same kind of horses with the same kind of saddles, and we wear the same kind of boots that our grandparents wore … and we wear mustaches just like the guys in the old black and white photos do.”

The high concentration of big, western mustaches immediately caught the eye of photographer Matthew Ginn when he moved from Ontario, Canada, to Elko, Nevada, in 2002. “A lot of men in the blue-collar towns where I lived had mustaches,” he says, “but nothing like these.”

One of the biggest displays of Western culture is the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, held annually in Elko, where hundreds of men and women from across the country gather to celebrate Western culture and traditions. Naturally, Western fashions— hats, boots, wildrags and bushy mustaches—are the order of the day. “But these aren’t people wearing a costume to look like a cowboy,” notes Matthew. “Most of them are, in fact, genuine cowboys and this is the way they dress.”

While mingling with the participants at the 2004 Gathering, Matthew snapped a photo of a gentleman whose whiskers had been waxed out almost as wide as his shoulders. Describing that mustache to friends later that night, it occurred to him that someone ought to document the fantastic mustaches seen at the Gathering. Soon enough the thought “someone should do that” merged with “I could do that,” and the project was born.

The portraits included here were made during the 2005 and 2006 National Cowboy Poetry Gatherings in Elko. Many people are owed thanks for their contributions to the project, especially the folks at Carlin Trend Mining Supplies & Services for the use of their space and, of course, the men and women who participated in the project.