His work has been a decade-long dialogue between the real and imagined West. His most recent project, Louisiana Trail Riders documents the unique Creole culture that gathers weekly to ride horses to the syncopated rhythms of zydeco music. Ariaz’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally. For Louisiana Trail Riders he was named the 2018 Louisiana state fellow, awarded an ATLAS grant, the South Arts finalist prize, and the Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. A solo exhibition of the work is currently on display through Sept 22 at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, NC then will travel nationally. UL Press has just published a monograph of the photographs which will be released at this year’s Shindig.