Before I began taking pictures in Iowa, I was photographing interiors of
decaying industrial buildings in the northeastern United States. In
2002, I read a series of newspaper articles that described momentous
changes in the agricultural economy of the Midwest and the resulting
transformation of the landscape: unused and abandoned farm buildings
left to decay in the countryside and in small towns. Perhaps due to my
American studies background, I was intrigued by the idea of exploring
this agrarian landscape and comparing it to the decaying industrial
America that I had been photographing.
In an attempt to define the purpose of my photography in Iowa, I came up
with the explanation that I was photographing the vanishing
architectural landscape of the single-family farm. I always felt that
the description was incomplete, because the single-family farm, by my
thinking, contained much more than the farmstead alone. I have gradually
come to understand that my notion of the single-family farm is both
broad and complex. It may have been a single entity - the family - that
owned and ran the farm, but it was a vast community of people and an
infrastructure that collectively comprised this culture.
My definition includes the traditional farmstead, the croplands, the
pastures, and all that is contained within the physical boundaries of
the farm. But it also encompasses small towns and shops where farm
products were traded, banks and businesses on which the farms relied,
the roads connecting farms to towns and to each other, the railways and
trains that transported what the farms produced, the county seat that
supplied public services and support, and the grain elevators that
provided a critical link in the distribution of farm products.
Besides not knowing precisely what I hoped to photograph when I began my
travels to Iowa in the spring of 2004, I never imagined that I would
make twenty visits over the next thirteen years, or that Grinnell, my
base in Iowa, would become a second home to me. I have witnessed the
disappearance of so many of the structures that I have photographed. I
have heard many stories about the farm that was once down the road or
the grain elevator that used to be by the tracks in the next town. I
once came to a hilltop from which I could see perhaps a dozen farmsteads
in all directions. I recognized that this was what Iowa once looked
like. It was a rare view at the time, and today even more so. Now, I see
for myself how the landscape changes when a farmhouse or barn or
fencerow vanishes and is replaced seemingly overnight by more corn, or
how the introduction of an ethanol plant or wind farm alters the
landscape in other ways.
Since my first trip to Iowa, I have come to love and respect the place;
I have learned much of its history, particularly how forces have
conspired over the years to produce the landscape that so captivates me
now. I have also come to share with Iowans an appreciation of their rich
history. I hope that my photographs, at the least, are a meaningful
record of that history and the evolution of the contemporary Iowa
landscape.
