I'm not sure what I loved first.....the quote or the photographs. There was something familiar about both.
"Sometime during midlife, he was taken with the idea that a tornado had carried him at birth from his natural parents and deposited him in the midst of the Meyer family, which raised him."
I took a couple of steps back from the dimly lit placard on the art museum wall and smiled. I liked this man......I liked the idea that he reinvented himself in midlife....by postulating that the life he was leading was not a result of his own doing but the result of a ferocious natural force that carried him off from his original destiny.
Mike Disfarmer was originally named Mike Meyer. He changed his name to Disfarmer in an attempt to recapture the concept that he was not from around here. Around here ....meant Heber Springs, Arkansas....which during the 40's and 50's was a rural cotton farming area north of Little Rock. Meyer means farmer in German and since he was not a farmer.....he renamed himself Disfarmer...to further distance himself from his surroundings.
About 10 years ago, his negatives were discovered and in 2004 researchers and collector went door to door in Heber Springs digging through old photo albums to find more of his work.
Disfarmer who died in 1959 was described by folks as lacking in basic social skills and without friends. Yet he was the town's commercial photographer....the man who recorded and knew everyone and their memories. He died in his early 70's....his body discovered in his studio days after his death....wearing his uniform....his white shirt and black pants. Supposedly, he ate only chocolate ice cream for months before his death.
He seems the classic brilliant but eccentric artist. The man who couldn't fit in....yet he could capture the very essence of people he could not bond with....he could see what they did not see in themselves.
His photos are simply. He took them in front of a concrete wall...and used only natural northern light. Folks complained that he never asked them to smile....and sessions were long because he was looking for something they didn't understand. Yet when you look at the photos....you see exactly what he was looking for....because he captured it....without a word....you can see stories in each of his pictures.
Another reason I was drawn to the pictures is because they remind me of photos my grandparents saved. The hard scrabble look that characterized Heber Spring natives was also the look my relatives carried from small Eastern European villages.
Take a look.
You can click on each picture and enjoy it....solo.
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