The Johnson sisters were at a country fair in Calhan, Colorado, making an appearance to photograph Loretta Lynn when Dick first saw and photographed them. The sisters chose to wear fancy dresses, gowns they had recently worn at the biggest country music shindig of the year in Nashville. Dick decided the portrait he did of them in the dresses was unsuccessful; the dresses were too elaborate, too much like costumes. They overwhelmed the essential quality of the women. So the next year, Avedon and Wilson returned to see them in their own surroundings.