While eating with friends at a restaurant in the spring of 2006, a woman approached me and asked, "would you like to sign a petition that would put Kinky Friedman on the ballot for the Texas governor election?" I was happy to sign but all the while I was thinking, "Kinky who? And what kind of a name is Kinky, anyway?" Little did I know that eight months later I would be following this Texas legend's campaign, tracking his every move, watching him rally, crusade, campaign, eat, snooze. Sometimes he would inquire, "Erin, darling, what shirt do you think looks best with my preacher's jacket?" It certainly was the beginning of a new and curious friendship.

Two weeks before the elections Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, center, discusses his plans with campaign coordinator Jewford, right, friend Barbara Bowman, left, and campaign manager Dean Barkley (feet showing) in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006. (Photo by: Erin Trieb)

But let's back up a bit. Having covered projects and stories in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, I felt that I was entering a whole new 'race,' so to speak. Like most young photojournalists, I have grown up in the photo family hearing from mentors and colleagues alike the advice, and sometimes demand, that I "find a story in your own backyard!" But my heart has continued to yearn for lands abroad and the appeal of the unknown. However, following a governor's race in Texas I knew I would certainly be close to home because some of the campaign locations were literally less than two miles from the backyard where I grew up. One of the campaign parties was hosted in a house where my friend from the third grade used to live—I walked in and thought, "I used your toilet when I was 8." So from the start I knew I'd be seeing a lot more of my backyard—and a lot more of Texas—than I had imagined.

As I began covering the "Kinkster," as many call him, I realized that an even more challenging aspect would be combining the familiar with the phenomenal. Kinky's bigger-than-life personality would not easily fit into a 12.2 MB frame. Fusing this cigar-smoking, world-traveling, book-writing, animal-loving, also notably notorious, mysterious man in black with such settings as the Kerrville County Courthouse or the high school gym in Bastrop, Texas, was definitely going to be a challenge. Kinky's friends and followers—who had names like Jewford, Reverend Goat, Jihad, Macaca, Chicken-dick, and Issy—offered a pool of personalities to be captured. (I, myself, was renamed by Kinky as "ET" for my funny initials.) However, I knew I had met my match photographically when I realized that for the duration of the campaign I would be shooting the same thing over and over again. For instance, I shot about 40 situations of people standing in line waiting for Kinky to sign books and campaign signs at bars and pool halls. Same small town, same bar, same four-hour fan line. More than once I considered setting my camera down in exchange for a cold beer instead trying for the billionth time to make another photograph of this scene ad nauseam. At this point I decided to regroup and went to the place to which almost every good photographer eventually turns—my roots.

Kinky Friedman on the monitor debates the other candidates at the 2006 Texas gubernatorial debate in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, Oct. 6, 2006. (Photo by: Erin Trieb)

I began looking at photographs taken by the pioneers of my profession—the guys I have admired for years and studied in college—Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand. Photographers who seemingly with ease were able capture the fantastic amongst the everyday mundane. Photographers who didn't need to go to exotic places to make a great photograph. Photographers who weren't pushed with the demand of wire or paper deadlines, who shot film of all things, and who slowed down to look a bit deeper. I was inspired by south-of-the-Mason-Dixon street scenes: hole-in-the-wall cafes and shabby, small-town establishments shot by Evans and Frank during their travels across the South while endeavoring to capture the essential America. This was a major influence on my decision to use black-and-white film and to shoot with a 6x7 rangefinder. Ten shots per roll, the absence of auto-anything and developing expenses demanded that I be careful with each shot, that I slow down, think, compose, breathe, wait, linger, look, recompose.

Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman and his dog, Brownie, spend time together at his family's Echo Hill Ranch before returning to a hectic schedule of campaigning around the state, in Kerrville, Texas, on Friday, Oct. 20, 2006. (Photo by: Erin Trieb)

After poring over photo books from the days of black-and-white analog, I began to embrace a new perspective. Instead of contemplating putting my camera down in search of a Shiner Bock when the campaign trail presented the same old situations, I would say to myself "ET, wait just a bit longer and see what happens…" and out of nowhere something magical would occur through the lens. A female fan would take off her bra for Kinky to sign (which he was obliged to do), or someone would tell a joke and Kinky would burst into laughter, which was a rarity. Even the smallest, most subtle gesture would end up making a photograph, whether it be the waving of a hand, the tip of a cowboy hat or the flicker of a smile. I slowly morphed from the pushy, aggressive news photographer I thought I needed to be, to a slow, small, quiet documentary photographer who no one seemed to notice. I leaned silently against walls, crawled around coffee tables, and peered from behind bar stools while trying to make myself as visually inconsequential as possible. Frequently, Kinky would exclaim, "Jesus, ET, what the hell are you doing hiding behind that plant!" after a few hours of not even knowing I was in the room. The more patient I became and the longer I held the camera up to my eye and waited—earnestly waiting for a photograph to present itself—the more it began to show in my contact sheets.

Kinky didn't win the election, which visually would have been the perfect ending to my story. I can only imagine what photographs would have been made—champagne glasses clinking, tears of joy and a burst of emotions riding on a single decision in time. But amidst these potential imagery-loaded photos I found the more seldom sought, quieter moments: Kinky napping with his dogs, seeing an old friend after many years of absence, telling stories over glasses of whiskey at the family ranch or the morning ritual of putting on his preacher's jacket. And in the end, these were the moments that best told his story, while indoctrinating me into the long, upheld tradition of pure and simple documentary photography.