Customer Reviews

Disfarmer: Heber Springs Portraits, 1939-1946; From the Collections of Peter Miller and Julia Scully

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If you love photography and love portraiture, you have to see this book. Mike Disfarmer sees his subjects as nobody has seen them before. If Avedon had a photo studio in Herber Springs, Arkansas, his photographs may have only looked half as interesting.

Mike Disfarmer was a commercial photographer in Heber Springs, Arkansas and devoted his studio time to capturing completely unfettered, natural, no props, no nonsense formal photographs of the folk who lived in Heber Springs. These photographs were for personal use - mementos, pictures to send to soldiers away at WW II, pictures to document families. As such these photos are some of the most tender presentations of small town folk in middle America. They are honest and in that honesty they are extraordinarily beautiful.

The presentation of the photographs on matte black background serves to enhance the classically poetic feel of this work. This is a mesmerizing portfolio, guaranteed to stir many memories of faded dreams. Grady Harp, March 05

Mike Meyers had left Stuttgart, Arkansas long before I moved here in 1962. When I graduated high school in 1946 my three best friends and I made a driving trip through northwest Arkansas and stopped briefly in Heber Springs and did not know about Disfarmer's photography studio. We had someone to photograph us with our Kodak folding camera standing on the courthouse steps. The Disfarmer studio was just a few blocks down main street and we missed the opportunity to be photographed by Disfarmer. I am so disappointed. Disfarmer's photographs of Arkansas Depression era people is the very best and everyone should have the pleasure of viewing it.

Richard Bullard

Sure, Mike Disfarmer is a genius. He gets people quiet and lets them begin to show themselves. When they are quiet and together, he takes their picture. You have to see the book to understand the result. The other genius is Julia Scully. She saw the value of the photos, wrote an excellent afterword, made her selections, and produced a breathtaking book.