Texas
This book captures the debauchery of Texas’ upper class in photos
Will Vogt was a firsthand witness to the debauchery of Texas’ most wealthy.
Will Vogt
A bespectacled man sits before a triple beam scale, carefully but blithely measuring out a quantity of cocaine. Deer carcasses, their heads facing the camera, lie in a row, blood in the foreground. A woman’s blonde head rests in a man’s lap, surreptitiously performing oral sex at the edge of a white-clothed table. These are images of privilege, candid and spontaneous, depicting lifestyles of the rich, if not famous. They come from Will Vogt’s new photographic book, These Americans (Schilt Publishing, $50), featuring photos of his peers shot in Houston, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Hebbronville, and the East Coast. They tell a story of decadence unguarded, captured over many years, mostly in the ’70s and ’80s, by one who was there with a series of point-and-shoot cameras.
“I used to go to weddings, and I’d see the professional photographers, the chicks in the black outfits,” Vogt says. “I would think to myself, ‘I know who these people are. I know who the mother-in-law is. You probably don’t, and I’m going to outshoot you.’ I was like a gunfighter at these things. I was convinced that my inside knowledge would make me get a better picture. It might not be the really beautiful picture of the bride, but I could get the drunken bridesmaids later, the underbelly of what was really going on.”
Raised in Haverford, a wealthy suburb just west of Philadelphia, Vogt was given a Nikon for his 17th birthday in 1969. He was quickly hooked. A scrawny kid who wasn’t into sports, he used a love for literature and the arts to get him through boarding school. He moved to Houston in the late ’70s to get in on the oil boom, and then, after the bust, to the family ranch in the South Texas town of Hebbronville, where many of the These Americans photos were taken. Today he spends most of his time in Corpus Christi.
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A photograph featured in These Americans by Will Vogt.
Will Vogt
Vogt’s images captured parties with Houston’s upper class.
Will Vogt
The title is a nod to The Americans, the 1958 photographic book by Robert Frank, one of Vogt’s heroes. Frank’s book was hugely influential in capturing the postwar lives of Americans from different social strata and races, and pointing out the inequality that a conformist Cold War country was doing its best to hide. Vogt is doing something different. He is showing what he knows, namely conspicuous wealth, and he’s doing it without mercy, favor or overt judgment. It’s hard not to laugh or recoil at some of the images in These Americans, but any objective assessment must also take into account their frankness, and the instinctive, unsparing eye of the man behind the lens. Unlike most other photographers of the upper class, like Slim Aarons, Vogt doesn’t seek to pose or glamorize. He’s after the real thing, and he is uniquely positioned to capture it.
Vogt got the perfect person to write the book’s introduction: Jay McInerney, whose novels, especially Bright Lights, Big City, remain emblematic of ’80s excess. “He knows what they’re thinking, and he knows that it may not be pretty,” McInerney writes in his introduction. “He knows who’s [sleeping with] whom, who cheats at golf, who starts drinking at eleven in the morning. But he’ll take them as they are. They’re his people. And he shows them to us in a way that no one else has.”
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A photo taken in Houston, featured in These Americans.
Will Vogt
Once Vogt’s editors Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Jordan Baumgarten agreed to work with him, they faced the task of sifting through and sequencing more than 100,000 photos. They wanted the end results, contained within the book’s blue-and-pink covers, to tell a story of a particular time, and particular places and people: the boy with pie all over his face (which looks a little like blood); the group of naked people with their faces covered (Vogt recalls that they were streakers who decided to pop into a party); the young man who seems to be practicing his golf swing by a urinal. The one known subject is George H.W. Bush, shown greeting supporters at a rally in Hebbronville during his first presidential campaign in 1988.
Garza-Cuen, who teaches photography at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, was fascinated by the sometimes violent ambiguity of the images. “There’s this push and pull of the beauty and the elegance and all the things that privilege brings, with some of the darker aspects,” she says. “The human nature is what human nature is. And of course, bloodsport is very much a part of that world. I think that we were very aware of all those themes, and our goal was simply to create a sequence that would sort of bring the viewers through, and let them make up their own minds about how they feel.”
Many of the photos in the book are from Texas in the 1970s and ’80s.
Will Vogt
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The project made Garza-Cuen think of The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway’s novel about his lost generation tragically flouncing through Europe, for which the bluntly honest author was accused of class betrayal. “Well, nobody’s punched me out yet,” Vogt says. Many of those featured in These Americans are now deceased. Vogt also points out he took his photos in a much different time than today. There was no social media, or digital footprints to worry about. “People weren’t as worried about the ramifications,” he says. “There was no place to post. If you took a picture, what were you going to do with it? Put it in an album or something. It was not going to go right on your Instagram page the next day.”
Now, however, Vogt’s people have been preserved for posterity. In all of their glory. And all of their ignominy.
Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers is not expected to play in the Longhorns’ SEC debut game against Mississippi State on Saturday as he recovers from an abdominal injury, ESPN’s Pete Thamel revealed.
Arch Manning will make his second career start for No. 1 Texas against the Bulldogs today.
Ewers was listed as questionable on the Texas football availability report, indicating that he had a 50 percent chance to play in the game, according to the SEC’s terminology.
But the expectation is that Texas will allow Ewers this week and the team’s open weekend coming up before the Oklahoma game on Oct. 12 to fully recover from the ailment.
Ewers sustained the injury in the second quarter of the Longhorns’ victory against UTSA on Sept. 14, retiring to the sideline and then the locker room for evaluation before returning to the sideline wearing street clothes.
Ewers was able to practice with the team on Tuesday, but was limited by coaches on Wednesday and then again on Thursday, as the team placed more emphasis on giving him rest.
Manning played in relief of Ewers in the UTSA game, and made his first career start the following week with Ewers sidelined, leading Texas to a win over UL Monroe.
Ewers has dealt with some nagging injuries during his collegiate career, missing time briefly in the 2022 and 2023 seasons before the abdominal issue this year.
In three games this season, Ewers has completed 73.4 percent of his passes for 691 yards and eight touchdowns.
More … Texas vs. Mississippi State score prediction by expert football model
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More college football from SI: Top 25 Rankings | Schedule | Teams
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Below you’ll find the top performances in rushing, receiving and passing from Dallas-area Texas high school football players in Week 5.
Rushing
Player, School, Yards
Allijah Harrison, Carrollton Newman Smith, 296
Greg Ard, McKinney North, 291
Christian Rhodes, Lake Highlands, 216
Jermirion Robertson, Lincoln, 214
Deondrae Riden Jr, DeSoto, 206
Ryder Grajo, Frisco Independence, 203
JT Harris, Euless Trinity, 201
Damarion Boozer, Carter, 194
Adarion Nettles, Mansfield Summit, 186
Keyzaylan Ware, Samuell, 176
Legend Bey, North Forney, 176
Tenel Hill, Lewisville, 166
Receiving
Player, School, Yards
Brock Boyd, Southlake Carroll, 213
Xavier Johnson, Richland, 208
Carlton Mims, Little Elm, 196
Dilon Tallie, Arlington Bowie, 177
Jordan Mosley, Princeton, 174
Blake Bates, Richardson Pearce, 164
Jett Hamby, Richardson Pearce, 163
Will Krzysiak, Argyle, 155
Ayson Theus, Duncanville, 153
Ja’Quavius Pipkin, Lancaster, 150
Jayden Beasley, Prosper, 143
Julius Spencer, Garland Lakeview Centennial, 141
Passing
Player, School, Yards
Keelon Russell, Duncanville, 474
Presley Harper, Richardson Pearce, 422
Drew Kates, Richland, 398
Marcus Flowers, Princeton, 389
Maguire Gasperson, Argyle, 387
Christian Hampton, North Garland, 364
Chris Jimerson Jr., North Crowley, 342
Grant Bizjack, Trophy Club Byron Nelson, 335
Brent Rickert, Rockwall, 321
Howard Fisher IV, Wylie East, 319
Edward Griffin, Coppell, 305
Jerry Meyer III, Waxahachie, 298
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Sign up for our FREE HS newsletter
At ABC13 Houston, we believe our democracy works best when everyone participates.
This year, Texas voters will cast ballots for our next president and vice president, U.S. Senator, congressional and state representatives, and decide on multiple judicial races.
Your last day to register to vote is Monday, Oct. 7, 2024.
Check your Texas voter registration | Register to vote (print, sign and mail)
Find your polling place
Texas does not offer online voter registration, but you can visit VoteTexas.gov to fill out, print, sign and mail your application. To be eligible to vote in the November general election, your registration form must be received or postmarked by the Oct. 7 deadline.
You can also register to vote in person at your local Voter Registrar’s office.
Even if you’ve voted before, you should still double-check your registration.
More than a million Texans have been removed from voter rolls since 2021, and the League of Women Voters told ABC13 that some voters have been removed if they didn’t register in the last two federal elections.
Early voting will begin Monday, Oct. 21 and run through Friday, Nov. 1.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Voting by mail in Texas is limited to voters who are:
- Ages 65 and older
- Sick or disabled
- Expected to give birth within three weeks of Election Day
- Out of the county on Election Day and during the early voting period
- Confined in jail, but otherwise eligible
- Civilly committed under Chapter 841 of the Texas Health and Safety Code
The last day to register to vote by mail in Texas is Friday, Oct. 25.
Click here to download an application to vote by mail.
What you can (and can’t) bring to the polls
All voters must present one of the following forms of photo ID:
- Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
- Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS
- Texas personal identification card issued by DPS
- Texas handgun license issued by DPS
- United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph
- United States citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph
- United States passport (book or card)
You can still vote if you do not possess or cannot reasonably obtain one of these photo IDs. You will need to fill out a Reasonable Impediment Declaration at the polls and show a copy or original of one of the following approved IDs:
- Certified Domestic Birth Certificate or Court Admissible Birth Document
- Current utility bill
- Bank statement
- Government check
- Paycheck
- Government document with your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
If you need assistance, voters may request help by any person other than the voter’s employer, an agent of their employer, or an officer or agent of a labor union to which the voter belongs.
You are not permitted to use a wireless communications device or any device which records audio, images or video within 100 feet of a voting station. This includes smartphones, digital cameras or sound recorders. Election judges are authorized to require anyone to turn off or deactivate any device.
While you may be excited to vote for a particular candidate, you should not wear any campaign t-shirts, buttons, hats or other accessories to the polls. This is considered electioneering, which is not permitted within 100 feet of the voting stations.
What’s on my ballot?
For a glance at what you’ll see at the top of your ballot, click here (PDF).
For down ballot races, see your county election authority’s website for details:
Harris Co.
Fort Bend Co.
Montgomery Co.
Galveston Co.
Chambers Co.
Liberty Co.
Waller Co.
Austin Co.
Brazoria Co.
Calhoun Co.
Colorado Co.
Grimes Co.
Jackson Co.
Matagorda Co.
Polk Co.
San Jacinto Co.
Trinity Co.
Walker Co.
Washington Co.
Wharton Co.
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