On April 25, 2008, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art at 826 Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will be filled with images of one of the most iconographic, history-haunted images of the West: the Stetson hat, in all its rumpled, dusty, rugged, and evocative glory. Soulie will also be exhibiting his series of images from the Zuni and Hopi landscapes outside of Santa Fe.

For photographer and mixed media artist Tony Soulie, a native of France, the allure of the Stetson was obvious. “After a series on objects,” he says, “such as Boxing Gloves, the Billiard Parlors, the Cities of Night, it was time for me to ‘tip my hat.’ That’s why I’m now exhibiting a series of American hats, the Stetsons—mountain-shaped, conic objects, which are also part of the history of the conquest of the Indian territories.”

Soulie, who has had solo exhibitions in France, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg, and many other nations, has a long and abiding interest in native and especially Southwestern culture. “From the footsteps of the voodoo fetishists in Benin and Nigeria to the Caribbean islands, my journeys have guided me into Native American territories, and more precisely the sacred ‘Corn Mountain’ of the Zuni people” he says. He’s immersed himself, as a curious, avid outsider, in the lives and the landscapes of the native cultures of the Southwest—including the native cowboy way.

Soulie’s works are unique, hand-painted photographs, hence the title of his show, One of a Kind. For One of a Kind, he will be exhibiting, for the first time, a new series focusing on the cowboy hat, a symbol of frontier staunchness and strength, as well as of the interwoven repressiveness and violence. The cowboy hat may be the most fraught symbol of the West. It also, in its humped, crumpled form, happens to be one of the most compelling on canvas.