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stevewiegenstein

~ News, announcements, events, and ruminations about my novel series, including Slant of Light, This Old World, and The Language of Trees, and about creativity, fiction, Missouri, the Ozarks, and anything else that strikes my fancy

stevewiegenstein

Tag Archives: photography

I Should Really Stay Away from the FSA Archives

12 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by stevewiegenstein in History, Ozarks, People, Photos, Rural

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art, Arthur Rothstein, Carl Mydans, Farm Services Administration, Great Depression, John Vachon, Ozarks, photography

A recent inquiry, which I will write about later, sent me to the Library of Congress‘ Farm Services Administration digital archive, looking at images. I’ve posted a few before. This is an amazing archive of photographs by some of the greatest photographers in twentieth-century America. It’s truly a bottomless pit for the curious browser. Here are a few that showed up when I searched the archive using “Ozark” as the filter term:

Children of Ozarks Farmer - Missouri 1940

Children of Ozarks Farmer – Missouri, 1940

Ozark Children

Ozark Children, 1940

Ozark Farmer and Family 1940

Ozark Farmer and Family, 1940

Ozark Mountain Girls 1940

Ozark Mountain Girls, 1940

William Stamper and Wife

William Stamper and Wife, Who Have Lived in the Ozarks for More Than Fifty Years, 1936

Woman with Spinning Wheel

Rehabilitation Client at Spinning Wheel, 1935

 

Images of the Past

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by stevewiegenstein in History, Missouri, Photos

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

detail, history, interpretation, photography, St. Louis

Researching my next book, I came across this trove of photographs in the online magazine Monovisions. 

There’s something about the visual image that arrests in a way that verbal descriptions never do. I lose myself in a narrative or descriptive account, letting my imagination recreate the scene; but with a photograph or map I find myself studying ever more closely, seeking out meaning in the slightest detail.

vintage-st-louis-streets-circa-1900-09

This photograph was identified as “ca. 1900” and located on Market Street. Let’s assume that the street address on the photo – 1310 – follows the same numbering system in use today. Here’s what’s there now:

1310 Market Street Today

A pocket park next to City Hall.

I’m tempted by the story, how the city went from Image A to Image B, but I’m also irresistibly drawn to the image itself. The life in that photograph! The man peering out from the dark interior on the left – is he the proprietor? And what draws his attention? The blurred passerby near him, or the two loafers propped again the liquor window farther down? I can’t make out the posters in that window, but they appear to be promoting a circus that’s coming to town. Below that, California wines are advertised. California wine, in Missouri, at that time? I never imagined.

The enormous billboard on the roof is another infinite attraction. The Forest Park Highlands will be opening for the season soon! There’s a matinee at the Imperial! And who can resist Tomlinson’s Dead Shot and Quick Relief Oil? I’d buy a bottle just for the name.

Pavers

And these pavers, identified as working on Compton Avenue north of Meramec in 1906, spiffy in their neckties. Why so many paving stones out? I’m guessing it had something to do with getting a good fit of the stones, with pride in one’s craft. Judging by the spires of St. Anthony of Padua in the background, this looks to be the block today:

Compton Ave

Those stone paving blocks are still underneath the asphalt, I’ll bet. That would be Gasconade Street crossing, which puts the location way south in St. Louis, down in Dutchtown. A solid and respectable address even then, with gaslamps, limestone foundations, and a big brick neighborhood church. You can see in the background how the paved street will improve the place, as the rutted dirt track leads up the hill to St. Anthony’s.

Street scene

Finally (for my purposes, anyway: there are more photos in the article), an unidentified street in the early twentieth century. It’s just the beginning of the motorized era; a sleuth more expert in early automobiles could probably identify the year by the look of the light cargo carrier in the right foreground. But carriages still dominate. Ahead of the man in the motorcar is another man in a one-horse gig, following a wagon that appears to be laden with sacks of grain as it labors up the muddy, tracked hill. But most fascinating of all is the heavy wagon coming in from a side street to the left, with an enormous wooden barrel. Delivering? Taking away? Whatever the task, I wouldn’t want to be that horse.

The marvel about old photographs is how the edges, the details, reveal as much or more than the putative subject. The cock of a hat, the item in a window, the passing glance, all speak to us.

Favorite Ozarks Images – 14

26 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Ozarks, Photos

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Anemone, Missouri, Ozarks, photography, St. Francis River, Wildflowers

Rue anemone on granite

Rue anemone on granite

In honor of the approach of spring, here’s a photo I took some years ago at the Silvermines Shut-Ins. I was taken by the patterns of the water over the granite and the contrast with the anemone blossom that had drifted in from somewhere.

Favorite Ozarks Images – 13

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Ozarks, Photos

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Missouri, nature, Ozarks, photography, rivers, St. Francis River

100_0006

Near the St. Francis River, Madison County, Mo.

Two New Books by Leland Payton

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Ozarks, Photos, Rural

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art, books, creativity, Missouri, nature, Ozarks, photography, writing

Missouri Squarely Seen Ozark Prairie Border

I was fortunate enough to obtain advance copies of these two new books recently, and I’ve been dipping into them section by section and page by page ever since. They are both essentially photo books, although both contain judiciously selected text (essays, comments, reminiscences) as well.

Subtlety is something of a lost value in our current esthetic environment. The outré and shocking gather attention and acclaim, encouraging a spiral of provocation in which each new art work must be more shocking than the last. But these books are subtle, and they take time to appreciate.

I’ve gone back and forth as to which is my favorite, but I think I’ve finally settled on Ozark-Prairie Border (176 pp.). This book depicts the area between Kansas City and Springfield, where the Ozarks slope down to wide bottomland and prairie, and where the beauty of the landscape takes more than one look to see. One response many people might have to some of these photographs – a wire fence enclosing a grassy field, a dilapidated building in a small town square, a bulletin board in a country diner – is “I could have taken that picture!” But would you? Would you have seen the unexpected richness of color in that field? Or the rhythm of the rural architecture, the beauty in small things that is celebrated here? The images on these pages reward contemplation. They are visual meditations on the rural places of western Missouri, and I find myself looking at them again and again.

Missouri Squarely Seen (114 pp.) ranges more widely and narrowly at the same time. It covers the entire state – landscape, people, buildings – but all images were taken with a square-format camera and retain that shape. Like the form of a poem, the square format of the image both constrains and challenges the photographer, demanding and rewarding a fresh compositional approach. The photographs in this book are rarely conventionally beautiful; in fact, the traditionally “photogenic” subjects are often treated ironically. In the square format, the Kansas City skyline, ripe for panorama, occupies only the middle fifth of the frame, with a street in the lower two-fifths, a kid climbing a weedy embankment beyond the street, and a Fifties-postcard-blue sky stretching much too far above the buildings for a conventional composition. The result is a somewhat comic distancing and diminishment of the classic landscape view. In some cases, though, the square image does not distance us, but rather focuses our attention on some person or object placed at a strategic spot within the frame.

Payton has a remarkable eye for color, and both these books are filled with richly saturated images in which the colors collide, harmonize, joust, or disappear into unexpected darkness. Both books are rich, rewarding, and beautifully produced. If you love photography, or Missouri, or both, you should get yourself copies. They’re available from Lens & Pen Press.

Gallery

More from Roaring River

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Photos

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favorite_places, Missouri Writers Guild, Ozarks, parks, photography, Roaring River

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Gallery

Roaring River – 2

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Ozarks, Personal, Photos

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favorite_places, Missouri, nature, Ozarks, photography, Roaring River, springs

This gallery contains 2 photos.

I have written earlier about Roaring River here. Just visited there again this week, and was struck once again by …

Continue reading →

Favorite Ozarks Images – 12

09 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Ozarks, Personal, Photos

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Missouri, nature, Ozarks, photography

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

Not from this most recent snowstorm, but from a while back.

Favorite Ozarks Images -11

04 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Ozarks, Photos

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Black River, Clearwater Lake, Missouri, nature, Ozarks, photography, rivers

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

Black River below Clearwater Dam, sunrise.

Favorite Ozarks Places – 12

14 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, Ozarks, Personal

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Boone County, Columbia, favorite_places, Missouri, nature, Ozarks, parks, photography, rivers

Pinnacles

The Pinnacles

I try to keep a copy of Beveridge’s Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri in the trunk of my car, much to the chagrin of my traveling companions sometimes. But how else will a person know if there’s a geologic curiosity just a couple of miles off the highway? Geologic Wonders is my Michelin guide, directing me to out-of-the way marvels that speedier travelers miss.

Beveridge calls The Pinnacles (Boone County’s version of them, that is) “a compact outpost of Ozarkia,” a nice turn of phrase from a writer who is usually more prosaic. They are formed by two parallel streams, Silver Fork (seen in the foreground here) and Kelley Branch, which runs just a few feet behind the limestone outcrops seen in the photograph. A few hundred feet downstream, Silver Fork circles around and picks up Kelley Branch, and then winds southward again on its way to Perche Creek and eventually the Missouri River.

When I was attending college, the Pinnacles were a favorite spot to come for a weekend picnic and rock clamber. There wasn’t much hiking — a couple of trails lead along the stream but don’t last — but it was only 12 miles outside of town and felt like home. Technically speaking, they’re not part of the Ozarks, being north of the Missouri River, but they sure look like they belong.

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