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TXR: What was your connection to ranch culture growing up?

Rahm: I’m a sixth-generation Texan, born and raised in San Antonio. Growing up, I’d been going down to my family’s ranch — the King Ranch — my whole life. But my generation was the first to be born away from the ranch. My mom and all her siblings were raised there — bilingual, riding horses, hunting.

I had plenty of exposure, and I learned how to horseback ride, but being the first generation born in a city… that’s a huge gap in how natural it feels to live that kind of life. It’s been a very slow, long journey of figuring out what that means to me, how I fit into it.

TXR: Tell us about how you learned to work on the ranch.

Rahm: Right around middle school, the family encouraged us to go down and work there for summers — kind of like a summer job. A lot of the boys would spend a few weeks with different units: cow-calf, quarter horses, riding along with the cowboys or Kinenos.

But at that age, I didn’t want to be there. I had no desire to be a cowboy. I loved the camaraderie with my cousins, but I didn’t feel like I belonged. Those years were tumultuous — my dad passed away suddenly right before high school — and the only way I was coping was drugs and alcohol. So those summers were just… going through the motions because adults told me that’s what I was supposed to do.

TXR: When did your experience on the Ranch start to shift for you?

Rahm: When I became a photographer. That changed everything.

I got into videography first — traveling, filming musicians, shooting concerts. I learned composition, exposure, visual storytelling. Then someone told me, "Go to the archives on the ranch." I spent a whole day alone in this room pulling down binders, looking through Toni Frissell’s contact sheets and prints.

It felt like I’d found a doorway that was my size. Seeing the ranch through that lens — and even using my grandfather’s old Leica — connected me to my history and let me explore being an artist at the same time.

Once I started taking my cameras down there, it allowed me to have a totally new experience. It had nothing to do with hangups or insecurities. It became exciting.

TXR: How did photography change the way you experienced the ranch?

Rahm: Some of the things I had a tough time with — masculinity, hunting, roundups, castration — all that intense stuff… before photography, I’d just present a version of myself that was "playing ball." It didn’t feel good.

But when I started using that land and heritage to create art, it was the inverse. It became a beautiful, positive, creative thing. I could observe, celebrate, and capture the experience others were having, even if those parts weren’t what I wanted to be doing myself.

Realizing it's all part of the history of Texas, the history of my family, and even humanity — that made me want to spend more time around it and capture it honestly.

TXR: You’ve talked about feeling hesitant to show your cowboy work. Why?

Rahm: I put so much pressure on myself. In my head, if I shared the cowboy or Texas stuff, it would create some whole story about me — political or social or whatever. I compartmentalized my interests because I thought people would judge me.

But then this photographer in the rock world — someone massively successful — told me the cowboy work blew his mind. He said he’d stop everything he was doing if he could go shoot that. I had never considered that.

I realized I was putting myself in the middle of some battle I wasn’t even in. And once I started showing it, I saw that a lot of these musicians and artists loved it. Cowboys and musicians have more in common than people think. Cowboys can be kind of punk. There’s a lot of individuality in both worlds.

TXR: Tell us about your new photo book, DEATH and TEXAS.

Rahm: It’s about growing up as a Texan, growing up privileged, and becoming painfully aware of all of that. I used to judge myself as if I couldn’t have an authentic human experience because it was "too easy" for me. That kind of self-talk was terrible.

The book wasn’t planned; it was something bubbling up through the experience. I kept seeing this duality — light and shadow. Things being born, things dying, things changing. A horrible season or a disease can wipe something out, and then something new grows.

I started to see that in myself too. And capturing it honestly felt like an act of love. There’s a photo in the book of a castration — not because I celebrate the pain, but because I don’t want to pretend it’s anything other than what it is.

Letting the things that hurt hurt, and letting the hope feel hopeful — that’s what made it beautiful.

TXR: You’ve said “cowboys are punk.” What do you mean by that?

Rahm: I always had a lot of hippie in me, but I started seeing that these cowboys were more connected to the land — honoring it, letting it dictate their schedule and lifestyle — than any hippie I know.

The idea that city culture and cowboy culture are totally separate… it took me a long time to see how similar they can be at the core. Punk, hippie, cowboy — below all that stuff, there’s something aligned: doing things your own way and being connected to something real.

Just being is punk. And it’s cowboy. And it’s hippie.

TXR: What do you hope people see in your work?

Rahm: I hope they can receive it honestly. I hope they see that this is just a representation of humanity and culture and history. And I hope it gives them space to feel something.

I’ve learned I can’t control how people receive it. All I can do is put it out lovingly. That’s the paradox — the second I stop caring, I actually start receiving the very thing I was trying to get by controlling it.