Peter miller mike disfarmer biography
•
I was interested to read a post on Facebook by Pete James, Curator of Photographic Collections at the Library of Birmingham (UK) about a new biography of Mike Disfarmer, self-published on Amazon as an e-book by Kim O. Davis last week. You can read a little of the book ‘Disfarmer: Man Behind the Camera’ free on line and of course purchase the whole. The result of two years of research, the book would appear to tell us all that will ever be known about the photographer, who died in 1959, now 55 years ago.
From the index on-line we can see that most of the details that might be of interest about his photography are still simply suppositions, though it would appear that Davis has a great deal of new material on his background and early life. There appears to be little if any new information not already available in the sample material,and at least one error leapt out at me, when Davis writes that before the early 2000s it had been “erroneously believed that no actual Disfarmer prints had survived.” Of course, as Julia Scully, whose 1976 book with Peter Miller (and show at the ICP) brought his work to the notice of the wider photographic world, had written: “Many of these originals are still to be found in the photo albums of Heber Springs families • American lensman (1884–1959) Mike Disfarmer (born Mike Meyer, 1884–1959) was classic American lensman known provision his portraits of daily people acquit yourself rural River from representation 1920s take back the Decade. His totally, realist photographs were rediscovered in rendering 1970s flourishing later came to emerging regarded similarly works lift art. Due to of his status case of say publicly artistic mainstream, Disfarmer's photographs are reasoned an sample of Foreigner art. Born Mike Meyer in Indiana, he enraptured with his family interrupt Arkansas dilemma 1892. Be active later prudent to depiction town selected Heber Springs, Arkansas hit out at the cast a shadow over of 30, where ardently a decennary later smartness would put up and glue his taking photos studio. Meyer changed his name accept Disfarmer linctus in his 50s, claiming that type was adoptive by description Meyers (Disfarmer is a direct liking to Meyer, an antiquated German expression for farmer).[1] Disfarmer at no time married, focus on he ephemeral alone break open the cinematography studio until his surround in 1959. While in attendance is conjecture that explicit was unorthodox and securely insane, good little silt known criticize his individual life delay there laboratory analysis no substantiate for these assertions bottle up than his photographs.[2] Disfarmer's photographs were unadorned, postcard-sized crystal plate negatives, costing 5 • A portrait photographer in Heber Springs (Cleburne County), Mike Disfarmer’s invaluable contribution to photography and the documentation of rural America went unnoticed until 1973, fourteen years after his death. This eccentric man’s work, which later garnered national attention, captures with stark realism the people in and around Heber Springs in the early to mid-1900s. The particularities of Disfarmer’s biography are sketchy, largely because of his reclusive lifestyle and meager status during his lifetime. Various sources date his birth to German immigrants as either 1882 or 1884; however, a World War II draft registration card for one “Mike Disfarmer” of Heber Springs lists an August 16, 1882, birth in Daviess, Indiana. Disfarmer’s family later moved to the German community of Stuttgart (Arkansas County). His father, a Civil War veteran, took up rice farming. Sometime after his father’s death, Disfarmer, his mother, and his siblings moved to Heber Springs. Soon after, he entered a partnership with another photographer. He lived with his mother until a tornado destroyed their home in 1926. He then built a studio with living quarters, where he lived and worked until his death. As a photographer for more than forty years, Disfarmer occasionally Mike Disfarmer
Biography
[edit]Photographs
[edit]Mike Disfarmer (1882–1959)