Mike Disfarmer
by Alan Trachtenberg

From Amazon:

Last year, as The New York Times has reported, a young couple from Heber Springs, Arkansas offered a collector 50 family photographs, unassuming black-and-white studio portraits dating from the mid-twentieth century. That quiet sale, which raised the possibility that there were other vintage prints of Mike Disfarmerís work in area family albums, set off a competitive buying frenzy that had collectors going door to door through rural Arkansas, spending more than a million dollars on several thousand prints. Disfarmer's work had originally been discovered in crates of glass-plate negatives, found by the speculator who purchased his estate. It was brought to light decades later in a series of books and exhibitions that set off consistent, continuing critical acclaim, but known only in posthumous reprints. Original Disfarmer Photographs is the first publication to present these vintage prints, made by Disfarmer's own hand at the time the pictures were taken--at once family mementos and the original work of one of Americaís greatest portraitists. Disfarmer spent half a century making studio portraits at pennies a picture to satisfy his rural clients, and creating a style of portraiture all his own. As one subject describes its genesis, "There wasn't much of a greeting when you walked in, I'll tell you that. Instead of telling you to smile, he just took the picture. No cheese or anything."

There is something surreal about spending more than a million dollars for a bunch of postcard sized contact prints that the photographer sold for pennies a piece. At least there is a posthumous recognition and a chance to see these remarkable portraits. I bought this book off a member of Rangefinder Forum and it's not available at my library but they had another Disfarmer book, Disfarmer: the vintage prints

Mike Disfarmer

Disfarmer

In the small mountain town of Heber Springs, the Arkansas artist known as Disfarmer captured the lives and emotions of the people of rural America between 1939-1945. Critics have hailed Disfarmer's remarkable black and white portraits as "a work of artistic genius" and "a classical episode in the history of American photography."

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THE DISFARMER PROJECT

The Disfarmer Project is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the great American portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959). Please browse our website for news and information about Disfarmer, and visit our store to purchase Disfarmer prints and books. A portion of the profits from the sales of prints will be donated to non-profit organizations in Cleburne County.

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From a Studio in Arkansas, a Portrait of America

Dead for half a century, Mike Disfarmer, the eccentric portrait photographer from Heber Springs, Ark., has drawn modest yet respectful attention in recent decades. From the 1920's to the 50's, he photographed a steady stream of townspeople in his Main Street studio in an American Gothic style of portraiture that was singularly his own.

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Profound Portraits
He was a small Southern town’s resident photographer. But there was nothing ordinary about Mike Disfarmer’s work.

Mike Disfarmer was the local photographer in Heber Springs, Ark. (pop. 3,800), from 1915 until he died in 1959. In his studio, he shot baby pictures, couples, families, young men going off to war, a hunter with the deer he'd shot, a fisherman holding up a catfish about half his size. There was nothing out of the ordinary about his subjects (well, there was the one man with a wooden leg). He shot ordinary people in their everyday clothes: overalls, leather jackets, fedoras, cotton print dresses. But that's as far as normality goes in Disfarmer's case. His photographs don't look anything like most family photos that ride around in wallets or gather dust in the good living room where no one goes unless there's company that you don't know real well.

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