Bud Dorsey is an under-the-radar legend with a profound devotion to his community, particularly to West Louisville. He finally has his own book.
As a young boy, Bud studied the photographs in the Louisville Defender and Courier-Journal newspapers and began dreaming of one day getting photographs of his own in print. Then a family member gave him his first camera, and he began learning through trial and error and by persuading local photographers to give him tutorials.
Upon graduating from Shawnee High School and serving in the Navy, Bud returned home and took a job at American Synthetic Rubber Company in 1964. For seventeen years, he worked at American Synthetic while taking photographs on the side and selling images to the Defender and the Courier-Journal and later to national publications such as the iconic JET magazine. His photos of Louisville models were chosen as centerfolds for about a dozen issues of JET.