Remember the Alamo
40-oz Lone Star, the Alamo, San Antonio, TX

"America's Heartland" is a triptych of photos that represents O'Dowd's effort to expand his palette from the western U.S. to the broad expanse of middle America. "Remember the Alamo," the first work in the series, finds O'Dowd visiting this monument to Texas independence. Contrary to a rumor spread after the shoot, O'Dowd did not urinate on the structure after this photo was taken.

O'Dowd believes that the rumor was started by rivals in the beer photography movement who were trying to sabotage the "America's Heartland" tour by discrediting beer photography as an outlaw artistic movement with little respect for its melieu. Indeed, San Antonio's city fathers originally debated whether to allow O'Dowd to take the photo at all, given his prior history (and history of priors). Ironically, they were extremely pleased with the outcome of "Remember the Alamo," and an original print now hangs in San Antonio City Hall.

The source of the urination rumor was divulged some years later as Cletus "Buck" McGinley, an O'Dowd protegé who later turned against the artist. McGinley was serving as a grip to O'Dowd during the "America's Heartland" tour, but secretly was plotting to destroy it from within in order to supplant O'Dowd as the leading light of the beer photography movement. McGinley's efforts were revealed in the 1995 exposé Alcoholic Photography: Blurry Window on an Unfocused World, by Kitty Cleveland.


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