In photos: Rednecks with Paychecks

‘American Diesel’ is a new photo series that looks at the people, places and culture behind the stereotypes of rural America.

“I really wanted to go somewhere off the beaten track, especially down in the southern states,” photographer Theo McInnes tells me over voice note while walking through a London park. “I saw this event called Rednecks with Paychecks, so I watched a load of videos online, did a bit of research and it was exactly what I was looking for – a particular aspect of American culture that I thought would be really interesting to photograph.”

Flying over to Texas in September of this year the veteran Huck photographer spent an intense week in the mud and the sun shooting and talking to those in attendance. A four day extravaganza Rednecks with Paychecks takes place in rural Texas twice a year and includes over 1,200 acres of amusement rides and attractions, with monster truck racing, music, camping and more.

“I was really interested in what redneck culture was and what it meant to people,” McInnes tells me. “One guy told me, ‘you know the really interesting thing is people just consider rednecks as dumb people who live out in the fields with no IQ’, he was standing there and he pointed to his brother and said ‘he’s a chemical engineer, he works in a nuclear power plant, I own an engineering firm and have been an engineer my entire life, people look at us and dismiss us and think we’re these stupid country folk from America but actually we’re smarter than a lot of other people.’”

It was exactly the sort of interaction McInnes had sought when undertaking the project. “The way I wanted to shoot this project was not to go there with judgements, and be judgemental of people, I went there to document them and these people’s culture and what they were doing.”

Taking place in an election year, against the backdrop of an increasingly polarised and fraught social reality in America, the allegiance of most of those to former President Donald Trump (who is the Republican party Presidential candidate in this week’s election) was hard to miss. “There were lots of Donald Trump flags flying everywhere… he seems this figure, this iconic character and rather than people being interested in politics and the election they seemed more invested in who he was, and how he represented them.”

Who did they think was going to win the election? “Trump, obviously.”

The photos from that heady week in September come together to form ‘American Diesel’. A selection of those images can be seen throughout this piece with the full project available on McInnes’ website.