Just north of Myrtle Beach, S.C., along U.S. 501 beyond the city of Conway, the consumerism and commercialism of the beach disappears and the past remains. Fields of puffy white cotton bloom along the side of the road and the remains of old barns loom in the background, a reminder of the agricultural and cultural history of this region.

Until improvements in ginning technology emerged in the late 18th century, the only cotton to be grown with any considerable profitability in the United States was the long-staple variety raised on the Sea Islands off of the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia.

The importance of South Carolina cotton declined over the course of the 19th century, leaving only Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as the four major cotton-producing states.

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Each spring, Coney Island USA, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to preserving the past and future of Coney Island, N.Y., convenes the Congress of Curious Peoples. The 10-day gathering draws unique individuals to the group's historic building, which features Sideshows by the Seashore on the first floor and the Coney Island Museum on the second level. The event is a collaboration of Dick Zigun, the executive artistic director of Coney Island USA, and Aaron Beebe, director of the Coney Island Museum.

The Congress of Curious Peoples is a mixture of lectures about sideshows and related phenomena by academics and live performances by some of the top sideshow acts around. The upstairs/downstairs setup provides a rare opportunity to explore the historical, artistic and political aspects of the sideshow through performances, exhibitions and films by noteworthy artists, academics and other curious people.

Michael Webster's essay explores the dual meaning of the phrase "Curious People." One meaning is straight out of the dictionary. The other is a euphemism for "freaks." Some curious people are curious about curious people. Others are curious people in and of themselves. When the curious meet the curious, when upstairs meets downstairs, when cool intellect meets raw emotion, the results are often very strange.

Michael Webster is an American photographer and writer living in Brooklyn, N.Y. He regularly shoots for trade magazines, freelances for consumer magazines and works on personal projects that may or may not be of interest to anyone else. [Full Bio Here]

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Sitting outside of the equestrian arena, Billy Ray Thunder held out his right hand and attempted to stretch his fingers. The middle finger was gnarled in a permanent bend, and the one next to it was broken and swollen, cocked in an unnatural state. Thunder wrapped a piece of white medical tape around the two disfigured fingers, hoping they would function well enough to endure the impending eight-second ride.

While the appearance of his fingers was enough to make most people cringe, Thunder didn’t seem to give it much thought. A professional cowboy, he has suffered more gruesome injuries through the years. A broken foot, shoulder and eye socket to name a few.

Thunder got on his first bull in Atlanta about 30 years ago as a bet with his brother and stayed on for six seconds before getting knocked off, an impressive feat for a first-timer. Afterward people asked him whether he had ever considered becoming a professional bull rider. “Uh, not really,” Thunder recalled thinking.

Thunder had just gotten out of the Navy at that time, and though his brother had been riding bulls for awhile, he never thought about getting on one himself. He was a young black man from Akron, Ohio, whose real name is William Ray Higginbottom. Bull riding was not on his radar.

But after that first ride, Thunder was hooked. The adrenaline rush he got while on the back of that 2,000-pound bucking bull could not be duplicated, and he yearned for more. Thunder joined the professional circuit and began touring the country as part of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and International Professional Rodeo Association.

Now 58, Thunder has switched from bull riding to bareback bronco riding, an equally dangerous sport that requires riders to stay on a bucking bronco for eight seconds. When he is not driving tractor-trailers for a living, Thunder travels to rodeo events with his two teenage sons and introduces inner-city kids to rodeo through the mentoring program he started called Life Skills.

On this day, Thunder and his sons were among the dozens of cowboys and cowgirls who flocked to The Show Place Arena and Prince George’s Equestrian Center in Upper Marlboro, Md., for the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo.

Black Cowboys & Cowgirls

The nation’s only touring African American rodeo, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo has brought bulldogging, roping, bareback bronco riding, bull riding, barrel racing and other events to cities across the nation for 27 years.

The rodeo is named for Bill Pickett, who was born to a former slave in Taylor, Texas, in 1870. Pickett quit school in the fifth grade and worked as a ranch hand before touring the nation as a Wild West performer. Pickett invented bulldogging, a rodeo event during which a horse-mounted cowboy chases down a steer, leaps from his horse and wrestles the steer to the ground, all in a matter of seconds.

One of the goals of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo is to raise awareness of the role that black people played in the development of the West. The rodeo’s promoter and producer, Lu Vanson, created the rodeo in the 1980s after visiting the Black American West Museum in Denver.

“I’m trying to promote the culture of the black West,” Vanson said on his Website. “A lot of people can’t relate to the pyramids in Africa. I believe a lot of us can better relate to the black Americans who were part of developing this country.”

For Darin Coleman, 46, a Fort Washington, Md., resident, the fact that the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo is an all-black rodeo makes it special. “It means a little more because a lot of black children don’t think there’s black cowboys,” Coleman said as he prepared to participate in the rodeo’s grand entry and compete in the relay race. “You look at a western, you may see Sidney Poitier or Danny Glover, that’s it.”

A Grand Entry

With R&B music pulsating from the sound system, more than a dozen horse-mounted cowboys and cowgirls gathered near the center’s back gate. As the riders prepared for the grand entry, the announcer boomed, “We salute our black American cowboys and cowgirls. We’re dominating in professional football, basketball and baseball. We’re on the rise in professional rodeo, too.”

Nearly all of the arena’s available seats were filled. The crowd included families with small children, women in sequin shirts and men in cowboy hats. Like nearly all of the participants, most everyone in the audience was black.

Once all of the riders were in position, the announcer directed the audience’s attention to the arena floor. “Right now we’re going down to the gate, and we’re going to get it on!”

The cowboys and cowgirls galloped into the arena. They opened the grand entry by displaying the American flag and singing "The National Anthem" and closed it by displaying the African American Flag and singing “The Black National Anthem.”

“Lift evr’y voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring.”

A Rough Ride

The first event on the schedule was bareback bronco riding. Billy Ray Thunder and the other participants swarmed near the shoots. Under a cloud of baby powder used as a gripping agent, the men secured their protective riding vests, stretched their legs and said a few prayers.

Wearing a button-down shirt that was more business than cowboy, Joseph Gethers, 28, of Washington, D.C., sat off to the side and adjusted his boots. Gethers was participating in the rodeo for the first time, and he was about to climb aboard a bucking bronco in one of the most dangerous events in the sport.

“I work in procurement at Howard University Hospital, but this is a dream of mine,” Gethers said. “It gives me a chance to show other kids here that they can also think out of the box and be who they want to be. ... If they see a young person out here following their dreams, that will help them follow their’s, to get out of D.C. and broaden their horizons.”

One after one, the men took their turns against the bucking broncs. Gethers stayed on for just a second before being thrown to the arena’s dirt floor. Others met a similar fate.

Thunder was confident that he would meet the eight-second requirement. But when the shoot opened, the bronco thrashed violently up and down like a boat on rough seas causing Thunder’s mangled grip to slip. He stayed on for only a couple of seconds before being tossed.

Later near the arena gate, Thunder gave a disappointing smirk as he held up his hand. His tape-wrapped fingers resembled a claw. “I’ll get it next time,” he said.

For more information about the Bill Pickett Rodeo, please go to www.billpickettrodeo.com.

Jenny Jones is the editor and co-creator of American-Journal. She has more than 10 years of experience working for daily newspapers and monthly magazines. She is currently the senior writer for Civil Engineering magazine during the week and a freelance writer on the weekends. [Full Bio Here]

Pete Marovich is co-creator of American-Journal Magazine and serves as photo editor. Pete is also the Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for ZUMA Press covering the White House and Capitol Hill. [Full Bio Here]

The Cooper River Bridge was a 2.71-mile span over the Cooper River in Charleston, S.C. It was built at a cost of nearly $6 million and officially opened Aug. 8, 1929. The bridge would later to be renamed the Grace Memorial Bridge.

To keep up with increasing traffic demands along U.S. Route 17, a new $15-million bridge opened in April 29, 1966, parallel to the Grace Bridge. That bridge was dedicated in honor of Chief Highway Commissioner Silas N. Pearman.

A 1998 environmental impact study determined that both the Grace and Pearman bridges should be replaced.

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge opened in 2005, replacing the two obsolete cantilever-truss bridges. Also known as the New Cooper River Bridge, the modern structure is an eight-lane cable-stayed bridge designed to satisfy today's traffic needs.

The new crossing was completed at a cost of about $700 million.

For more information about the Ravenel Bridge, please go to www.ravenelbridge.net.

From the back of the postcard: "The giant Cooper River Bridge, nearly 3 miles in length, leads from Charleston to Mt. Pleasant, Sullivan's Island and the Isle of Palms. There is not a bridge in the world like it in size, length, height or design, and it was constructed at a cost of over 5 million dollars."

I will never forget that day in 2002 when sportswriter Matt Coffey came up to me and said these magical words: "monkeys, riding dogs, herding sheep."

I just stared at him.

A big smile across his face, Coffey slowly repeated what he had said. "Monkeys. Riding dogs. Herding sheep."

It had to be among the top 5 of things ever said to a photographer at a small-town newspaper. All I could say was, "I'm in!"

Off we went to the professional rodeo, which was being held nearby.

There, we found Tim "Wild Thang" Lepard, a former rodeo clown and bull rider, who in the late 1980s began putting capuchin monkeys on the backs of border collies and setting them loose to herd sheep. He called his animal act Team Ghost Rider and took it on the road, offering comic relief between dangerous rodeo events.

Recently, the popularity of Lepard's show has exploded. Instead of just performing at rodeos, his Ghost Riders have been seen performing for fans at minor league baseball and professional football games. They have even been featured on television sports shows.

But if you ask me, it's no surprise, really. Who doesn't want to see monkeys, riding dogs, herding sheep? I know I did.

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Somewhere between teenage fantasy and the reality of poverty are the girls of Glouster, an old company town in southeast Ohio. They're coming of age in a former coal boomtown with few modern resources, struggling as they attempt to craft their own aspirations.

The community is home to the state's poorest school district and is regionally notorious for crime and dysfunction, which has risen in the last decade with the influx of prescription drug abuse and heroin. But for these girls, the lightness of their youth allows them to quietly defy the cards they have been dealt.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Andrea Morales' project "Extracted Dreams, Implanted Realities" won TIME Magazine's 2011 inaugural Next Generation Photography Contest. Student photographers were invited to submit a portfolio for review by TIME's editors. Morales won the top prize of $2,500 and a portfolio review with the magazine’s photo editors.

Andrea Morales was born in Lima, Peru, in the midst of hyperinflation and political instability to a very lovely set of parents. After catching some luck during a visa lottery, Andrea and her family moved to Miami where she spent her formative years observing life and writing about it in Spanglish. [Full Bio Here]

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On a recent December day, the parents of a young fallen Marine turned their grief into an outpouring of love for thousands of American heroes.

John and Susan McColley hosted a Christmas wreath laying at Quantico National Cemetery in Virginia. With the help of volunteers, the couple laid wreathes on the grave of their son, Sgt. Jonathan "Eric" McColley, and the tombs of 2,000 other soldiers.

Eric McColley, 23, died when his helicopter crashed in Africa in 2006. He had served in the Marines for five years, including a tour in Iraq.

The McColleys purchased the wreaths with money raised through the Sgt. Mac Foundation, a nonprofit they formed in honor of their son, and ABF Trucking transported the wreaths to Quantico free of charge. Dozens of volunteers helped lay the greenery, showing support for the McColleys and gratitude to the veterans who gave their lives.

“These people served our country, so it’s always good to give back,” said Jake Roberts, 17, of Spotsylvania, Va., who helped lay wreaths with fellow members of the Quantico Young Marines. “They made the ultimate sacrifice.”

From One To Hundreds

The McColleys laid wreaths at the cemetery for the first time in 2006. They put a wreath on their son’s grave one week, and the following week they bought a fresh wreath to put in its place. But instead of simply replacing the old wreath with the new one, the McColleys moved the old, still green wreath to another grave. After transferring wreaths a couple of times, the McColleys convinced the store where they bought the decorations to give them a deal on a bulk purchase of about 500 wreaths.

On a rainy Christmas Day, the McColleys, along with their daughter, Cheryl Newbanks, 27, laid the wreaths on the graves in Quantico’s Section 10, where their son is buried. As the McColleys leaned the wreaths against the stark white headstones one by one, passersby stopped to help, and several asked for wreaths to put on their loved ones’ tombs. The response got the McColleys thinking that they should lay more wreaths this holiday.

“Last year, there were not a lot of wreaths because … these young men don’t have family in the area,” said Susan McColley. “These young men have died, and their families are all over the country. I count my blessings that I’m able to come here all the time.”

A ‘Terrific Friend’

For the McColleys laying the wreaths is about more than decorating graves, it’s about healing. It’s about remembering Eric, who his family describes as a happy redhead who loved life and was the picture-perfect son.

“My son was the love of our life,” Susan McColley said. “He never gave us a minute’s hardship. We did everything together.”

Susan McColley said she would always cherish her memories of attending Jimmy Buffett concerts, walking on the beach and riding motorcycles with Eric.

“We had more fun packed into these 23 years than most mothers have in a lifetime,” Susan McColley said. “We were terrific friends.”

Newbanks said she would always remember her brother as an outgoing guy who held his service in the Marines in high regard. Joining the military “was a big decision for him,” she said. “He was going to stick it out for 20 years. He loved being a Marine.”

A Christmas Message

A few minutes after the wreath laying began, the volunteers had the 2,000 holiday decorations in place. Bob Caulfield, of Fredericksburg, Va., helped lay the wreaths with his 6-year-old great-grandson, Shawn Gray. Looking out at the freshly decorated tombs, Caulfield said he was glad to do something to show his great-grandson the true meaning of Christmas.

“I wanted to show him that there’s another part of Christmas besides Santa Claus,” Caulfield said.

The McColleys and their daughter were humbled by the response from the volunteers.

“It’s hard to imagine that people aren’t going to know [Eric],” said Newbanks, who named her youngest son after her brother. “We will just have to make sure we tell [everyone] about him to keep his memory alive.”

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the December 2007 issue of American-Journal. The McColleys continue to host the annual wreath-laying project at Quanitco National Cemetery. For more information, visit www.sgtmac.org

Jenny Jones is the editor and co-creator of American-Journal. She has more than 10 years of experience working for daily newspapers and monthly magazines. She is currently the senior writer for Civil Engineering magazine during the week and a freelance writer on the weekends. [Full Bio Here]

Pete Marovich is co-creator of American-Journal Magazine and serves as photo editor. Pete is also the Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for ZUMA Press covering the White House and Capitol Hill. [Full Bio Here]

A Santa waits to use the men's restroom in the crowded Blitz bar in the Pearl District in downtown Portland, Ore. The Blitz was swarmed by a sea of Santas, elves and reindeer who came out by the hundreds for the 2011 SantaCon pub-crawl.

An event billed as for adults only, SantaCon is an annual gathering of people dressed as Father Christmas and other icons of the Christmas season. Their goal is to spread goodwill and have a good time as they sing naughty Christmas carols and hand out small gifts to strangers.

The event was founded by the San Francisco Suicide Club in 1994 and later adopted by the Cacophony Society. The Cacophonists, which bill themselves as "a randomly gathered network of individuals united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society through subversion, pranks, art, fringe explorations and meaningless madness," celebrate Christmas in a distinctly anti-commercial manner by combining street theatre and pranksterism.

SantaCon is now celebrated around the world.

The Junior Carnival and the J'ouvert Parade take place every Labor Day weekend before Brooklyn's Labor Day Carnival Parade. The festivities are honored traditions of the New York City borough's West Indian community.

Also known as the West Indian Day Parade, the J'Ouvert Parade has grown from thousands of participants to more than 3.5 million people in attendance. Brooklyn is said to be the home to the largest West Indian community outside of the Caribbean.

Roughly translated, J'Ouvert means "the day has begun."

While Brooklyn's Labor Day Carnival has a Caribbean flavor, J'Ouvert more of a Trinidadian celebration, showcasing steelband, calypso and masquerade. It began in Trinidad as a mockery of the French masquerade ball.

Slaves, who where without the fancy costumes and refined dances of their owners, covered themselves in mud and paint or oil and danced to a significantly different beat.

Although mostly just a giant party in Brooklyn, J'ouvert retains a bit of a political edge.

The images in the Authorized Personnel Only essay where created using an iPhone and an in-camera application called Plastic Bullet. The images were shot with the iPhone 3GS and processed using the app, which includes different filters that alter how the images look. The filters are basically the same except for the color shifts and contrast. For this essay, I chose filters based on how they made each image "read."

When talking about photojournalism, I have to be honest and say I am on the fence about using these kinds of in-phone applications to manipulate images. As photojournalists, we strive to produce truthful images that accurately represent the scene as it appears before us. As National Press Photographer's Association President Sean D. Elliot recently said in a post to the APAD (A Photo A Day) list server, "It's supposed to be telling stories, telling them fairly, accurately. The point is not to filter the world in a way as to make it aesthetically pleasing."

The other side of the argument was made by Damon Winter after a set of his images, which he shot with an iPhone and processed with the Hipstamatic application, won 3rd place in the 2010 Pictures of the Year International Contest.

Winter said: "Any discussion about the validity of these images comes down to two basic fundamentals: aesthetics and content.

At the heart of all of these photos is a moment or a detail or an expression that tells the story of these soldiers’ day-to-day lives while on a combat mission. Nothing can change that. No content has been added, taken away, obscured or altered. These are remarkably straightforward and simple images.

I don’t see how this is so terribly different from choosing a camera (like a Holga) or a film type or a processing method that has a unique but consistent and predictable outcome or cross-processing or using a color balance not intended for the lighting conditions (tungsten in daylight or daylight in fluorescent, using the cloudy setting to warm up a scene)." – from the NYT Lens Blog (Damon's full post and photos can be found here)

Elliot's and Winter's arguments both make a lot of sense, and I have found it difficult to come to a conclusion myself.

I mainly did this essay as an exercise to see how the process works for myself. It was a side project that I worked on while going about my daily coverage of events on Capitol Hill.

One thing that continues to bother me, is the motivation for using an application to manipulate the image. If it is a matter of making the image better or, as Elliot puts it, "aesthetically pleasing," then maybe the photo is really not any good to begin with. If you put a new paint job on a beat up car that barely runs, you may have a car that looks better but underneath it is still a piece of junk.

Below are two of the images shown above before the Plastic Bullet application did its magic.

So, does the manipulation make them more interesting than they were before the processing? Are they better now or are they still just mediocre images?

I think if photographers are simply making art, anything goes, and they should use all the tools at their disposal to create their vision. But I wonder if photojournalists, who are supposed to be telling true stories and capturing accurate representations of the scenes in front of them, are not just using it as a crutch when the angles or the light are not working in their favor.

I understand the argument that with all of the special effects that people are now used to seeing, it is possible that they are bored with the same mundane images they always see. But if the general viewer is bombarded with more manipulation from a profession that has recently had more than a few instances of faked and altered news images that are being passed off as factual, will they just begin to assume that everything is altered? Photojournalists are always trying to find new and different ways to bring important stories to the attention of the masses. But is this the best way to do it?

Winter is a very talented photojournalist, and I am certainly not suggesting that he is incapable of shooting compelling images. He just happen to be the one whose photographs that brought this discussion into prominence. I think he is correct in saying that it is no different then shooting with a plastic toy camera, cross-processing film or converting an image to B&W. Our eyes don't see that way either.

I am sure the debate will continue, and it may be some time before we decide whether the use of cellphone applications is simply just another choice made by the creator of the image.