She had lost veteran patients to suicide, to domestic violence. She'd healed kids broken by adults and fought predatory insurance systems day in and day out as a neuromuscular massage therapist. There was beauty in medicinal healing. It satisfied her, but it also triggered extreme PTSD.
“I needed my own healing and found my trauma was making me cagey, not calm and kind as a good healer is, so I grieved the old me, went to a state park, dug a grave for her in the woods, screamed my pain at the moon, and filled up the hole,” Elliott says in an email to the Observer. “I came home, changed my first name to my last name, signed up for years of therapy, and stepped into photography, art as a new, complex woman.”
Over the last 11 years, Elliott has become one of the fastest rising names in photography. Her widespread work has ramped up her resume at warp speed. She’s documented Leon Bridges’ and Grammy and Oscar-winner Jon Batiste’s rise. Her client list reads like the who's who of music, art, fashion and celebrity, with collaborations and partnerships with Columbia Records, Sony Music, Lucchese, Stetson, Tecovas Boots, GQ, Vogue and Rolling Stone.
Earlier this fall, Elliott took a pause. The city she has called home since middle school had become a public homage of love letters to those she loves, has loved and has lost.
Elliott took to social media on Sept. 23 to document the “Rambo Public Art Tour,” an eight-stop tour of her purposeful photography on display for free throughout Fort Worth.
First Stop: The Chat Room Pub
It’s hard to separate Leon Bridges' image from Rambo Elliott. The two came together with a magnetic force that propelled their individual successes. “Leon was honestly one of my first muses,” Elliott says. “He's beautiful in many ways, his dark Black skin, the way he carried himself as a dancer, he was so shy, but could make you feel so seen when he looked at you.”
Pre-fame days, Fort Worth was Elliott and Bridges' playground. Elliott’s breakout photo was a piercing black-and-white image of Bridges holding a Gretzch guitar.
“There we were, just a bisexual girl with autism and PTSD, a Black man struggling with identity in America at Rima's grandma's, a Palestinian professor's Texas, family home,” says Elliott of the shoot's location. “I studied American military history being raised by a World War II vet, so I guess I understood even back then how absolutely beautiful it all was for all of us to be there at that present moment making art together — how revolutionary it felt for all those kinds of differences to be standing there lovingly, kept under by the world, but here all the same. So I took a picture.”
The image entered a juried exhibition at Artspace111.
“You couldn’t tell us a thing, he was on the got dang wall of an art gallery,” Elliott wrote on Facebook. “No one bought it, but Brad from The Chat [Room] said he’d proudly hang a photo of us, and did. It’s still there.”
Connection and Loss
Elliot’s unintentional public art tour weaves a story of redemption through connection and vulnerability.“I found it very hard to find myself worthy of love when the world was constantly punishing me for being myself, for not sitting still enough, being too loud, dreaming too much, all things I get hired to do now,” Elliott says, ending the sentiment with a “Haha.”
Bridges’ first press photo found a home at Record Town, the tour’s second stop. The black-and-white image of a young Bridges is a record of the rare creative freedom that brought on Elliot’s healing.
“In medicine, it was all about untangling people's psyches and bodies; it was a lot of emotional and physical labor,” Elliott says. “In art, it was freedom. I built worlds for people I loved to feel powerful and safe and beautiful in.”
Alongside artist Ruben Burgess Jr., Elliot reclaimed downtown Fort Worth’s AMC theater. The public tour spot is now a shrine to vulnerability. Elliot’s giant portraits with Burgess’ interconnecting drawings tower over pedestrians. The images and conversations behind them remind Fort Worth that shared vulnerabilities connect and empower..
“Being in one town a long time means you watch it progress, you watch how it moves, what it protects, and you see ideas and people truly change it,” Elliott wrote on Facebook. “Nowadays on that same corner, with a lot of my intention and love from my city, my project on vulnerability and connectedness exhibits their multiple stories tall, proudly, boldly with a better message for the next generation of Fort Worthians downtown.”
Each click of Elliott’s shutter is an intimate dance between an artist and her muse. The photo is a moment immortalized. One day, they’re all that’s left.
“Connection and vulnerability and time are truly all we have,” the photographer says. “I've been to a funeral a year since 2019, sadly. Nothing is promised, if you have something you want to do, I know it's hard and we're in a system that makes it hard on purpose, but please do it.”
In 2020, Fort Worth mourned the loss of Jeremy Joel, a self-taught painter Elliott credits with helping her become the artist that she is. Muralist Jay Wilkinson painted a photo Elliott took of Joel on the back of Ostara Coffee.
Two years later, Elliott’s twin flame Manaliki Wilson, known as Remfu, died. The whimsy and beauty of a day spent among red Japanese maple trees is memorialized in a heart-wrenching portrait that hangs at Cherry Coffee Shop.
The famed photographer's public art tour continues at Brix Barbecue, Abe Fromage and The Social Space. She hopes people walk away from the project with a deep yearning to uplift themselves and others.
“Be stubborn,” Elliott says. “See your people as the icons they are. Love well. Keep creating. You may just blink and one day your city is full of what you made with those folks you loved without even meaning to. Art is worthy!”
