Backwoods Genius (Kindle Single)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.14 (756 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B00986ZD7W |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 445 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-08-02 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Seems to be an intro for a longer book. Typical Kindle Single?" according to Amazon mom. Well, this was my first Kindle Single. Guess I should've researched the purpose of Singles first but I jumped the gun because this one sounded so interesting. In the end, it left me a little frustrated because I discovered ta-da! A Kindle Single is SHORT! This was basically a medium to long-ish sized magazine article. It outlines how cool the discovery of Disfarmer's work was, what a gem it was, how unusual and mysterious he seemed and then how hard it was to research him and find a publisher or supporting information.Just when it started to really roll (they began . "Chance played a huge role in bringing Disfarmer's work to light" according to J. Chambers. Author Julia Scully has written a fascinating account of how an obscure small-town portrait photographer's work came to light after many years of sitting in boxes in an exposed carport. The town was Heber Springs, Arkansas, and the photographer was Mike Disfarmer (although he had changed his birth name of Meyer). For 50¢, a family got three postcard-sized prints from Disfarmer, a recluse who lived in quarters behind his studio and seldom mixed socially. Fifty cents was a lot of money to dirt farmers who were so poor that "when the Depression came, they hardly n. Photographing Ozark Cotton Farmers of 30's Amazon Customer A photographic record of poor families lives in small Ozark communities in 1930's and. 40's,by an eccentric bachelor photographer whocaptured on old glass plates the significant events in their lives. Fortuitously, over a decade or two, these photos survived without any knowledge of their value until accidently discovered by a new couple in town who saw the unique quality of this photographers work.
Like countless other small town portrait photographers across America, Mike Disfarmer lived and died anonymously, in a tiny, remote village in the shadow of the Ozarks. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn’t been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn’t spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. How did it happen, then, that the most implaus
--Neal Thompson. What a quirky gem of a story. As editor of Modern Photography magazine at the time, Scully played a key role in championing the intimate beauty of Disfarmer's work, which captured both the poverty and stoic resilience of his subjects, most of them residents of Heber Springs, Arkansas. The New York Times called Disfarmer's work "an outstanding discovery" and he has since become the subject of books, films, and exhibitions, his black and white mini-masterpieces selling for thousands of dollars and hanging in New York City’s MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is a beautiful and a strangely hopeful story about the lasting power of a humble and reclusive photographer's rare gift. (See for yourself at disfarmer.) Scully helped publish a book about Disfarmer in 1976, which prompted comparisons