Beau Simmons is an American fine-art and documentary photographer whose work centers on the contemporary American West and the working cowboys who live it. Shooting mainly on medium and large-format analog film, he has spent years photographing some of the largest and most historic ranches in the United States, often riding alongside his subjects on horseback to capture the people, land, traditions, and day-to-day realities of modern ranching.
Simmons started his professional career in 2009 in fashion photography, working with brands including Marc Jacobs, Guess Jeans, and Converse, and with agencies such as Elite Model Management, IMG Models, and Ford Models. He later stepped away from fashion to focus on a more personal body of work rooted in the American landscape and Western culture.
Influenced by Richard Avedon, Slim Aarons, and Stephen Shore, Simmons works as both documentarian and artist. His images pair close observation with a quiet sense of nostalgia, preserving real moments within a culture that is still changing. His West is not an imagined one. It comes from sustained access to working ranches and the people whose lives are still tied to the land.
His commitment to storytelling and preservation reaches beyond the West. His first book, The Twenty-Year War, made in collaboration with American combat veterans and released in 2021, grew into a traveling museum exhibition about the experiences of post-9/11 veterans. He has also used his photography to support charitable organizations including the American Cancer Society and the Careity Foundation, and partnered with writer and Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan to document the historic Four Sixes Ranch in support of cancer care services.
Simmons' work has been shown in galleries, exhibitions, museums, and major international art fairs, including Art Miami, and continues to grow into long-form documentary projects about the people and traditions of the American West.
Central to that work is Ways of the West, his ongoing photography, publishing, and feature film project documenting working cowboy culture across the United States. Drawn from years of access to ranches and communities nationwide, it is an evolving visual archive of a culture rarely documented from the inside.
