Naran Patel has published his book about the " BARNS OF ARKANSAS" A PHOTO JOURNAL.
The barn pictures( with some explanation) shown in this book are but a small part of thousands of photographs Patel took over the last four years while traveling over the back roads and byways of rural Arkansas. Book has filled 176 pages with samples of rural life in the state.
Looking at his book's pictures you can almost smell the odor of fresh mown hay in the loft. If you listen carefully, you may hear the music and foot stomping of a BARN dance where everyone gathered to socialize and forget if just for a moment, the hard work that kept a small farm going. Or, you just might hear the clanking of the milk pails on a frosty winter morning as cows were herded into their milking stalls. The farm family's very survival depended on the contents of these old BARNS.
Patel's passion for these PHOTOGRAPHERS began when he was born and raised in an agricultural community in INDIA where he grew up working in his father's fields of cotton,rice,wheat and other crops. At early age, he moved to America to study in US universities, growing up in Los Angeles, California.
After locating to Arkansas in 2000, on Design/build/start-up project in Pine Bluff Arsenal, Naran's thrust for the outdoors emerged with more enthusiasm because so many interesting subjects in Our Natural State to capture in pictures. The strong roots and memories of the rural culture that he so loved was nurtured once more and it shows up in the pictures in this book.
Patel's beautiful photography takes you through the back roads and out of the way places to show you a cross sections of BARNS from modern to Pre-statehood.
