I’ve recently been working more on what is the early days of a series made around my hometown in central Illinois. This week, I came up with a working title, though I’m not entirely sure if I want to put that title out there quite yet. I shared it with a few friends of different media and they all felt it was a strong title, so it’s off to a good start.
Additionally, Sufjan Stevens, the pride of Illinois’ sad music scene, has a new record coming out very soon. Any sad music fan in the Midwest knows how his music has really captured much of the spirit of the region. I’ve been listening to his music more and more lately, constantly disappointed that he stopped the states project after 2 states. Because of this recent listening spree, I started working on a playlist that is entirely of songs made by either Midwestern artists, songs about places in the Midwest or just have that Midwestern spirit while not being explicitly about the Midwest.
The Midwest offers such a vast range of landscape contrary to popular belief. My favorite thing to tell people is that Illinois has canyons. But of course, the more “interesting” places in the Midwest are heavily photographed, and of course I’ve taken plenty in those places. Whenever I go to those locations, I try to explore the surrounding area as well as the main attraction. Oddly enough, Illinois’ canyons at Starved Rock State Park and Matthiessen State Park, are areas that I have not really explored too much around. I’ve taken a few pictures here and there but it’s usually around the time where friends and I were having lunch or dinner after a hike.
While looking back at photographs I made between the summer of 2019 and this past May 2023, I’ve seen certain consistencies and those gems among the corn fields. Compositions that are interesting and pull me in as well as subjects that are either representative of the landscape while not being of the landscape or subjects that feel displaced yet “comfortable” where they are. I think the latter really captures some of that Midwestern spirit.
With all this, I’ve been studying more rural photographers, mostly contemporary but some that have been around much longer and still out there taking picture (even if at a much slower pace, ironic for the Midwest known for a slow pace with everything). My undergrad had a professor who had retired a couple years before I started studying there, Rhondal McKinney, who got his name out there for his photographs of corn fields made mostly in the 80’s and 90’s, but even today he still goes out there with his 8x10 view camera and the only real difference may be some windmills in the distance or some distant modern agricultural equipment. I got to go to his studio with one of my classes in my last year at Illinois State, seeing his basement turned into a photo lab for himself was fascinating and reminded me that you don’t have to have a hookup with a specific lab in New York to make beautiful prints. Even his contact print setup was so simple and allowed him to make some of the most lush, beautifully contrasted contact prints of his 8x10’s.
More recently, Bryan Schutmaat released his book Country Road, aptly titled in reference to the work. After looking up some interviews with him talking about the series, it started during the lockdowns of COVID-19 and moved on from there. The book itself is small but beautifully made, a burlap-like book cloth around with with a tipped-in photo of, you guessed it, a country road. Many of the images are dark, sometimes lit with flash or perhaps car headlights. Even with this work being made in Texas, it still captures that spirit of middle America that I’m interested in exploring. Through the book, there are breathing points of a brown paper that seems to create chapter-like mini sequences. The photographs range from truly striking to quiet and mundane — that alone is one of my favorite things about what is called “post-documentary” photography (a different conversation to be had about the silo-ing and naming of genres of photography). The landscape is familiar in this series, it reminds me of what I drive around and take my own photographs of in central Illinois.
Then there’s Tim Carpenter, who recently published his book To Photograph is to Learn How to Die (I haven’t quite finished it but what I have gotten through is truly eye-opening). I have spent a lot of time with his work since he came up in the same general area as me, not too far from Urbana-Champaign, Illinois — right in my neck of the corn fields. One thing that I’ve found through looking at his work and my past work is that it really is hard to deviate from the subjects that Midwestern photographers are always surrounded by. From plantation forests to dilapidated railroads to an old power line pole isolated among the fields. It’s hard to not take pictures of these things. The subject is always generally similar, but it’s a combination of the theme, the location, the sequence and the minute details throughout. I wrote in my MFA thesis that Midwesterners love small details and the more that I look at rural photographers’ work, the more that is reaffirmed for me.
Expanding beyond the Midwest, I’ve found that Ben Ward’s work I Dream of Dust made in Eastern Colorado provides a similar feeling to Schutmaat’s. However, Ward’s book involves more portraits and has a more airy feel to the photos as opposed to Schutmaat’s more dark images (of course both series have images that break away from the dominant styling). Eastern Colorado could be considered the furthest west part of the Midwest while not actually being in a Midwest state. The land of vast, flat and almost entirely farmland, expanding on the Nebraska and Kansas landscapes. For me, this series is not just about the Eastern Colorado landscape, but also becomes about the men who live and work there. When thinking about what I want to work on with my Illinois work next, I’ve been considering doing more portraits among the landscapes, as well as interiors. Those kinds of shoots would require a bit of planning and more time in my visits to make sure I can get the best images possible. From adds on Craigslist and going into groups on Facebook, there’s a good likeliness that one or two families will allow me into take photographs. After all, it’s a series about the very land that they live and work on, and showing the people is important.
As I plan my next trip to Illinois, I sometimes battle with myself about sitting down with work like these artists’. There’s an amount of discipline that can be hard to maintain when you’re not in school, no obligation to read or view work. I’m hoping that continuing both this blog more as well as my podcast will help get me back into that headspace. My next trip to Illinois will be a bit shorter than before, just shy of a week long, but I anticipate hitting the ground running, getting out to shoot shortly after landing in my hometown’s airport. These “work trips” to my hometown will be full of familiarity and new photographs, and that’s my hope. I’ve been looking at past photographs made on the same camera to see if there are any older images that fit this theme that I’ve been thinking about, and sure enough there are a few. I’ll be bringing these artists’ books with me as inspiration and things to think about while back in central Illinois. The rural imagery that I’ve come to love has this interesting vernacular that each artist working in develops their own vocabulary, and I’m excited to contribute to that with my own.