Triple Crown-winning jockey Steve Cauthen greets teens at the door of i.imagine Photography Center in Union.
After a day in school, the sleepy-eyed kids offer a smile and a limp handshake—all but one, a boy a bit taller than Cauthen’s 5-foot, 5-inch frame. He’s a curly-haired seventh grader known as “the 8-track lover” because of his fascination with a donated tape player in the breakroom. But there is more to his story.
The boy, Owen, tells Cauthen that his great-grandfather rode a horse that won the Kentucky Derby, but he doesn’t know much else. Cauthen fills the awkward silence. In 1950, Middleground won the Derby and the Belmont Stakes, and finished second in the Preakness. Jockey Bill Boland, Owen’s grandfather, rode the horse and is a member of the National Racing Hall of Fame.
The moment that Owen meets Cauthen encapsulates the project in which 10 students from i.imagine will participate—2024 FotoFocus Biennial: Backstories.
Founded in 2010 in Cincinnati, FotoFocus is a nonprofit organization that celebrates and champions photography as the medium of our time through programming that ignites a dialogue between contemporary lens-based art and the history of photography. This year’s celebration unites artists, curators and educators from around the world. It encompasses projects across Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Northern Kentucky—the largest of its kind in America.
i.imagine offers photography clubs and education in marketing and business—it has a snack shop run entirely by students. A darkroom filled with cameras, film hung by clothespins, and enlargers—one of which is a Vietnam-era machine used for mapping during the war—expose kids to a world of possibility through photography. Throughout several rooms that once housed a Sunday school, backdrops for studio shots and donated cameras and equipment invite creativity.
At 16, just a few years older than the children he’s come to meet at i.imagine, Cauthen lay unconscious for 10 hours after being thrown from a horse during a race. His size and the fact that he was unconscious led to recuperation in a pediatric ward. As he mended, he visited the cancer ward and was encouraged by patients to get better and go back to racing. That was the same year he broke records both as an intern and professional jockey: 487 wins and $6 million in purses.
He says now, “To get back on a horse after an accident like that takes courage.” It’s not that he wasn’t afraid but that he overcame the fear. To do that isn’t easy, but he remembers those cancer patients’ words of encouragement.
“When I started, I had no idea I could be as successful as I turned out to be,” he says. He would go on to win the 1978 Triple Crown aboard Affirmed, then win every major race in Europe over the next 14 years.
Cauthen hopes to give the students an opportunity to discover aspects of the racing industry that they can focus on to tell their story through the camera lens.
A Focus on Photography + Education
When we think about taking pictures, the first thing that comes to mind likely is a smartphone. Snap as many images as possible and hope one reflects what is seen with the naked eye. Social media, phone storage and computers are littered with pictures. Cloud storage seems infinite until the load of unused images overwhelms it and us.
i.imagine Photography Center, the brainchild of Shannon Eggleston, exposes kids to the art and the practicality of the craft, both as a hobby and a career. Eggleston, who taught in K-12 classrooms prior to founding i.imagine, believes that there is no right or wrong in a photograph, and the same is true for the students there. When they look through the lens, there is an opportunity to tell a deeper story.
Eggleston began the organization as a professional photographer in 2014, and i.imagine gained nonprofit status in 2016. Students like Zoey Hoffman, who has been affiliated with i.imagine since sixth grade, keep the goals of the organization alive. One of her photos of the Roebling Bridge that spans the Ohio River is an example of Eggleston’s mission. Richard Hunt, the owner of Roebling Books & Coffee, had donated his father’s Rolleiflex camera to i.imagine. Zoey, an unsuspecting student, captured the image of the bookstore’s namesake bridge. The backstory gives deeper meaning to this oft-photographed icon.
“For me, being part of i.imagine is having a safe creative environment,” Zoey, now a 12th grader, says. “When we take photographs, our hearts pour into them, and having people also look at our photos and say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s really cool,’ validates our emotions and perceptions of the world. Being in i.imagine has just let me present myself in a way that feels more comfortable and less exposing. I’m still expressing myself but behind a camera, where I feel freer.”
Students come from all walks of life. Luke Rogg, a high school junior, stops by i.imagine in farm boots, work pants and a bright orange T-shirt with a firefighter insignia on the front. He doesn’t have as much time for photography anymore because he, like Cauthen, knows his path. Luke is in training to become an emergency medical technician and firefighter when he finishes high school.
He makes eye contact with certitude and says, “What I’m taking away from [i.imagine] is you don’t always have to be perfect. It’s just how you view yourself and your work. And from that, you can make yourself.”
Eggleston nods her head in agreement, as if Luke’s words add value and meaning to her work and that of the staff. In addition to Eggleston, i.imagine employs three teachers and two interns. Eggleston has a penchant for inviting people to give of themselves—students, staff and volunteers alike.
Snap Judgments + Split Seconds
“Decisions have to be split second,” Cauthen says of a race, “and if you make them in a split second and a half, it’s too late, and then you end up causing yourself more danger by not being able to make a definitive decision.”
Programming over the coming months, culminating in an exhibit in the fall, occurs in three well-thought-out phases. Nationally recognized photojournalist and i.imagine staff member Madeleine Hordinski leads students in preparation for field work by helping them focus on what they want to learn from the experience. They complete a summary to guide their journey through the world of horse racing.
The kids then meet Cauthen at New Day Ranch, a riding program in Verona for children with various emotional and therapeutic needs. There, Cauthen joins Beth Long, director of the ranch, to teach the kids the language of horses, how to approach the spirited animals, their anatomy and basic safety rules. As Eggleston says, “My goal is to provide many different ways for the kids to organically immerse in the backstory.”
With Cauthen’s help, the students will gain access to the backside of Turfway Park to focus on stories of grooms, exercise riders, breeders like Cauthen, and the untold stories of four-legged friends in the stables—goats, dogs and ponies employed to calm the horses. “There’s more to racing than a jockey, a trainer, and an owner,” Cauthen says.
Cauthen offers opportunities to catch the students’ imaginations. He says, “I’ll try to fill in the blanks of what I know about racing, or if I can’t, I’ll find somebody who can.” Along the way, he hopes they will be intrigued and want to know more and, hopefully, take some good photos. The key, he believes, is to capture their imagination and to learn how something came to be.
Before summer, Cauthen hopes to have the students visit his farm, also in Verona, and witness what a day in the life of newborn foals is like—that is, if Mother Nature cooperates, and the foals are born on time. His love of the industry is what fuels this mission to expose young people to every aspect of racing. “Human and equine interaction on the backside and around the track is the stuff that comes from farms like mine, where it begins,” Cauthen says.
During the summer, students will meet to curate the exhibit. They will make choices, hone stories for showing, and cultivate a presentation with Cauthen.
A grand opening of the exhibition in October will include a panel discussion led by Hordinski with Cauthen and some of the students. The goal is to present what students learned from the experience.
A Lasting Impression
“The beauty of art and the beauty of photography is a way that we can each immerse in it. A piece of art is different for everyone. There’s no right or wrong to it,” Eggleston says. That is the uniqueness of the i.imagine mission: to cultivate students to capture the beauty and intrigue of the world around them. With Cauthen’s help, that goal can be realized.