Exhibit honors photographer Melinda Wickman Swearingen and a legacy ‘in danger of being lost forever’

Sheila Jackson Lee, Kinky Friedman and Johnny Canales are just a few of the notable Texans who passed away in 2024. There are many others who may not be household names, but whose contributions to the Lone Star State certainly deserve to be recognized – and one such person is photographer Melinda Wickman Swearingen, who passed away in March at age 76.

Her images are on display at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University through next summer. The Standard heard more from Hector Saldaña, curator of the Texas Music Collection at the Wittliff, who’s called Swearingen “the Annie Leibovitz of outlaw country.”

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: “The Annie Leibovitz of outlaw country” – high praise indeed. What’s the backstory there?

Hector Saldaña Well, Melinda Wickman Swearingen really was one of the first to put a face to the music that was coming out of Austin at that time, you know, which really revolutionized the Texas sound. And she was almost a singular figure among the great photographers that were around, like Burton Wilson and Scott Newton.

And it was her photographs of amazing what we call outlaw country musicians – Willie Nelson, when he was still doing open mic nights; that’s how she met him, if you can believe that, in Austin – Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff, all those folks, she photographed them for the book that Jan Reid put together, “The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock,” which was published in 1974, 50 years ago.

I’m wondering if you can describe an iconic image that perhaps people can reference, something that stands out to you, in her photography.

Yeah. One of the photos that I think is amazing, and it has a backstory, is the photograph of Willie Nelson that was used for the album called “Wanted! The Outlaws” – the outlaws album, you know, which is really one of the reasons why we call it outlaw country music.

And she said Willie Nelson, and even Waylon, it was hard to capture these guys when they weren’t smiling. So she was on Willie Nelson’s property, you know, and, she has him swinging in a tire swing and all this stuff. But there’s a photograph of him leaning against a tree with a little black cap that’s used for the image.

And it was the very last piece of negative. It’s the last frame that she had. And she just happened to look over her shoulder and saw that he wasn’t smiling. And she said she didn’t even aim the camera; she just literally pointed it over her shoulder and clicked.

And that was the one that ended up being used for that album. I think it’s things like that that you just have to, like any photographer, wait for the shot, and sometimes they’re happy accidents.

I understand that in 1997, something happened to many of these iconic negatives from these photos. What happened?

So Melinda left Austin in the mid 1980s to live in Canada, to raise a family, and eventually settled in Vermont. She was originally known for photographing musicians, and she moved on to movie sets. But she always maintained a darkroom and a work area, and that was flooded in her Vermont home in ’97.

It was a traumatic event. I mean, she said the negative cases and images were just caked in mud and sewage. And she was away at the time. And so the materials were moved to a barn that up until the end of last year, she had never entered. It was that traumatic of a wound.

And so it added to her mystique, because she kind of dropped out of the scene and no one had really heard from her. She was living quietly in Vermont. She had been a librarian and was not doing photography.

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And so when I tracked her down and she told me that story, you know, the first thing I told her was, “Melinda, I think you need to walk into that barn.” And she did. And I think there was some catharsis there.

And then, like any historian, you know, as a curator and archivist, I’ve learned this: Sometimes you follow that trail and you find out that not all the negatives are destroyed – that there are some images. And so that’s some of the stuff that we’re preserving at the Wittliff Collections.

Amazingly, the images that we put up earlier this year for the exhibit – called Melinda Wickman Swearingen: Outlaw Odyssey – she helped curate it; we co-curated it. She had never had an exhibit of her work before. This is the first time her images ever have been displayed in a gallery setting. It’s hard for me to believe.

Her story almost embodies the mission statement of the Wittliff Collections and places like the Wittliff, which is the preservation of this important history of the arts in Texas. And, you know, as great as she was, I mean, her legacy was in danger of being lost forever.

I’m so glad it’s being preserved. What will visitors be able to see, and when? 

The exhibit opened earlier this year. It will run through July 4th weekend of 2025.

They’ll see 19 images that she selected, most of them unpublished, which is pretty amazing. The image of Willie Nelson, which I mentioned, is on display, as well as a smiling version a few clicks earlier.

We had looked at a lot of different images, and we decided to focus on Waylon and Willie just because of that outlaws album, because those two musicians are so iconic and married in time, you know, the relationship, that I just thought that was a good starting point.

Her death was unexpected. She had had some health issues. But when I visited her in November of 2023, the expectation was [for] her to come down and participate, perhaps in a panel discussion, and visit. But she did get to see the gallery, which looks beautiful. We sent her a video and photographs of it.

And also there’s a beautiful photograph of Melinda Wickman in her prime working the 1976 Willie Nelson 4th of July picnic that’s taken by Scott Newton that she reconnected with at the end of her life. She said that that image moved her to tears. And she kind of had closed the door on that part of her life, you know, and she reconnected with that young woman.

And she would get quite emotional. I mean, for me, it was very moving to just hear her talk about that. But she was very bright woman, great sense of humor and a part of Texas music history.

Correction: The audio accompanying this story says the exhibit opens next month; Melinda Wickman Swearingen: Outlaw Odyssey is already on display through July 6, 2025.

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