Cirrus Bonneau: Capturing Interplay of the Everyday

The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections. 

Ahead of the December 22 release of the movie The Iron Claw, a biographical sports film based on the life of the Von Erich professional wrestling family from the Dallas area, we are highlighting photos of the Von Erichs from the UTA Special Collections’ Cirrus Bonneau and Ana Beaulac Photograph Collection and presenting a profile on the photographer behind the photos, Cirrus Bonneau.

Cirrus Bonneau (1948-2017) grew up in the Pacific Northwest and picked up photography while serving in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1972. He was inspired by the work of photographers like Walker Evans and Edward Weston and later took a photography class while studying Horticulture at Oregon State University to learn more about large format photography. By the late 1970s, Bonneau had moved to Texas and officially began his career in photography. Bonneau’s first photographic project was a study of log cabins in Texas for the museum at North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas) in Denton. He was the photographer for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant titled Dog Trots and Mud Cats where he traveled around Texas and photographed various log cabins in a 4 x 5 format, which resulted in an exhibition and a published book. 

Bonneau regularly participated in art shows and exhibits after moving to Fort Worth beginning in 1980 while he was working as a documentary photographer for the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History. Most notably, Bonneau exhibited 102 photos of Fort Worth at the museum called “Panther City Romance” in 1981. The Cirrus Bonneau and Ana Beaulac Photograph Collection came to UTA Special Collections in 2003 and an exhibit featuring their donated photographs was held in Special Collections in December 2005. The collection primarily consists of photographs of cemeteries across the U.S. and Mexico, as well as Fort Worth buildings, streetscapes/daily life, and events—including dozens of wrestling matches held at Will Rogers Coliseum. 

In 2015, Special Collections prepared another exhibit featuring Bonneau’s photography, this time focusing on his work around the wrestling ring at Will Rogers Coliseum, called Ringside: Memories of World Class Championship Wrestling. In this 2015 interview with KERA News, Oliver Bateman, a former professor at UTA and curator of the Ringside exhibit, says Bonneau wasn’t really interested in wrestling, but he lived near the Will Rogers Coliseum and a friend convinced him to go to a match. 

"And when he was taking photos, because he wasn't really interested in pro-wrestling, he became interested in the interplay between the crowd and the wrestlers," said Bateman. "When he took all the photos in this exhibit, he tried to take them so that you could see both what the wrestlers are doing in the ring and what the crowd was doing." 

Like any good documentary photographer, Bonneau captured “grandmas screaming at wrestlers, kids cheering for their favorites, and one competitor wearing a cowboy hat and a whip. This mix of crowd interaction and show biz helped build the championship wrestling organization based in Dallas-Fort Worth” (Martin, 2015). 

The passion exuding from wrestling fans during those matches at Will Rogers Coliseum is immediately evident in Bonneau’s work. These photographs in particular were taken before the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE) nationalized the wrestling business in the mid-1980s. It was around this time that pro wrestling was divided into regional territories, many of which (particularly in the South and Southwest) were extremely important to the communities where they were based. From 1982-1986, no regional promotional was more important to its community or more successful than World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW), operated by Fritz Von Erich (Jack Adkisson) and featuring the talents of his five sons: David, Kevin, Kerry, Chris, and Mike. The Von Erichs emphasized Texas pride and family values in their ring presentation; they wore ring apparel featuring the Texas flag or Texas colors and defended the state's honor against any and all rivals who sought to besmirch it. At their peak, three-man matches featuring David, Kerry, and Kevin drew huge crowds to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. 

WCCW thrived because its fans sold out Reunion Arena in Dallas, the Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth (where Bonneau took the above photographs), and the Dallas Sportatorium to cheer for the all-American Von Erichs and boo the villains who were booked to oppose them. When it came to Monday Night Wrestling in Will Rogers Coliseum, Cirrus Bonneau came equipped with not only a camera, but also a goal to document everyday scenes in raw form—not posed or altered—capturing seemingly small moments in daily life. Bonneau referred to himself as a historical documentarian, and his collection of wrestling photos tells its own story—preserving the heroes, the villains, and the drama for generations to come. 

The Cirrus Bonneau and Ana Beaulac Photograph Collection is housed in UTA Special Collections, containing 8,049 negatives and 696 prints, created by this husband-and-wife photography team primarily during the 1980s. The collection includes a large range of negative formats and sizes, photograph prints and matted prints, newspaper clippings, exhibit announcements, and Bonneau’s Personal Index books of his negatives.  

To view more photographs from the Cirrus Bonneau and Ana Beaulac Photograph Collection on the UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, visit: https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/collections/cirrus-bonneau-and-ana-beaulac-photograph-collection

To view more photographs of the Von Erichs on the UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, visit: https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/search?search_api_views_fulltext=%22Von+Erich%22

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Sources 

Cirrus Bonneau and Ana Beaulac Photograph Collection Finding Aid [unpublished]. UTA Special Collections, 2005. 

"Cirrus Bonneau Captures the Way We Are." Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 7, 1984. 

Giribet, Javier. "Wrestling panel provides snapshot into the ring." The Shorthorn, November 4, 2015. 

Hiller, Terry. "Panther City memories awaken." Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 4, 1981. 

Hollandsworth, Skip. "The Fall of the House of Von Erich." D Magazine, 1988. 

Hudson, Samuel. "Craftsman chases art in photos." Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 31, 1983. 

Martin, Justin. "A Glimpse into the Golden Age of Wrestling in North Texas." KERA News, September 30, 2015.  

McClurkin, Brenda. "A New Dimension—The Photography of Cirrus Bonneau and Ana Beaulac." The Compass Rose, UTA Libraries Special Collections, 2005. 

"Ringside: Memories of World Class Championship Wrestling" exhibit website. UTA Libraries, 2015. 

Ritchey, Mike. "Panther City lingering on in photos." Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 21, 1981. 

Seltzer, Robert. "Von Erichs: A good hold on life." Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 16, 1980. 

Spong, John. "Six Brothers." Texas Monthly, 2005.