This exhibition presents the vintage photographs of Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959), one of America's greatest portraitists. The discovery of Disfarmer's original vintage photographs was the culmination of an unprecedented two-year historical reclamation project in which a dedicated team of researchers scoured family albums in every home along every road in Cleburne County, Arkansas. 

A true American eccentric, Disfarmer was born Mike Meyer in 1884.  He legally changed his name to Disfarmer to disassociate himself from the farming community in which he plied his trade and from his own kinfolk—claiming that a tornado had accidentally blown him onto the Meyer family farm as a baby.  Despite his quirks, as the resident studio photographer in tiny Heber Springs, Arkansas, Disfarmer captured the faces of the American heartland at a defining period in history, as they struggled through the Depression and World War II.

Disfarmer is often compared to Walker Evans for his powerfully rendered Depression-era Southern subjects, and to August Sander for his rendering of “people without masks.” In turn, Richard Avedon acknowledged Disfarmer's influence when he created In the American West. In his biography, Rick Woodward writes, “Disfarmer is not cruel, patronizing or sentimental about [his subjects'] plight.  But neither is he a friend or pastor. He is like a crime scene photographer, determined to record the details because the details are what ultimately will exonerate a person.  The reality of their condition—the hats, creases in their jeans and dresses, lines in faces and hands, bad posture, dangling cigarettes and arms, staring eyes—can be preserved in a photograph and serve as existential evidence.”