Ringside: The Crowds
Photographer Cirrus Bonneau, who took these photographs between 1982 and 1983 at the Will Rogers Center in Fort Worth, was deeply interested in the relationship between the wrestlers and the crowd. He tried to capture this in his photographs, which were taken with a Graflex XL camera using a Grandagon 58MM wide-angle lens and 6 x 9 roll film back. He used TRI-X shot at 100 and a Norman 200B strobe that would carry up into the balconies. He produced thousands of negatives using this method, several dozen of which are mounted and on display here.
The results were unlike any other wrestling photographs produced during this era, the majority of which were taken by commercial photographers and featured conventional rather conventional up-close "action shots." Instead, Bonneau has successfully documented the intense relationship between the fans and the heroes and villains they had come to watch. His pictures help us remember how important the WCCW was to the Metroplex by allowing us to see the fans as part of this larger and much more interesting story.