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Seeing Rural Life Through the Missouri Photo Workshop [1]
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Date: 2024-11-01
It was a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon when I walked through the streets of Kennett, a small town in the Missouri Bootheel, camera in hand and looking for folks to photograph.
I passed sights unique to the town but common to rural America: A longtime movie theater, its legendary bakery, a WPA-built courthouse and some buildings where it looked like the past was a better place to be. A sign on a clothing-store-slash-salon thanked folks for keeping things local.
My steps were fueled by a desire to see the “real” town of about 10,500, a rural community that’s Sheryl Crow’s hometown and is surrounded by flat farm fields.
That’s a key goal of the Missouri Photo Workshop (MPW).
For more than 75 years, the MPW has drawn dozens of photojournalists from across the country and around the world to a series of small Missouri communities to document local life and people.
It’s an opportunity for participants to hone their abilities to candidly capture everyday life. The MPW archive, “one of the greatest collections of photographs of rural America,” its website notes, also serves as a time-capsule-like representation of that place’s presence.
This year, I was one of the program’s chosen participants, which led me to Kennett on that hot Sunday afternoon. It was the opening session of the week-long program, which officially commenced that day with all 40 of us photographers, many student staff members, and faculty teams gathered in the First Baptist Church’s Family Life Center.
“By the end of the week, I hope you have 40 somewhat intimate and nuanced photo stories that represent this town from the wonderful to maybe the not-so-wonderful, all of it real,” said Brian Kratzer, director of the MPW, at that first session.
Cotton is one of several crops commonly grown in the Missouri Bootheel. This sight was across the road from the First Baptist Church’s Family Life Center, where the MPW had its headquarters. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
Jumping Behind the Lens
That meeting started a whirlwind, caffeine-fueled, intense week. Those photo stories he mentioned? They were the core focus of the program: Each of us photographers individually pitched ideas to our faculty members. It might be a story about a person or a family or something unusual that was happening in town that week.
Once a story was approved, we spent most of our time taking photographs that could best tell this everyday story through a series of 10 or so images from the 400 we were allowed to take.
We were continuing a story that began in 1949 when Cliff Edom led the first workshop in Columbia, Missouri, home of the famed University of Missouri School of Journalism. The method has shifted some with time – such as the switch from film to digital images – but the overall goal of the process is the same.
Edom, who is often credited with coining the term photojournalism, was a professor at the Journalism School when he was inspired by photos produced by the Farm Security Administration to propel the idea of storytelling through photography – leading to the MPW’s start in 1949.
Details point to different times in Kennett, like the engraved “Cotton Exchange Bank” on a building just off the town square. The bank no longer exists as an independent entity. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
“We want them to look at photography as they’ve never looked at photography before,” Edom said in a 1984 article in the Columbia Daily Tribune. “Next time they go out on assignment, they’ll be a different person.”
Even though Edom died more than 30 years ago, I think that approach still rings true today. At least I can say that the experience made me see the world differently: In greater detail, and in small moments that help define a story.
As those moments were captured, we shared them through check-ins each day with our faculty members, who critiqued the images we shot. Sometimes there was guidance on how to do things better. Think about framing, and showing emotion; that images should be sentences, not simply nouns. There also were some tears. This was a challenging experience.
Then, each evening, we all gathered: Both for education from the faculty members, whose backgrounds included employment with the New York Times, the Associated Press and National Geographic, and Pulitzer Prizes – and a review of images everyone took that day.
We were grouped into teams for this work. Stories from my teammates included a football star who was placed in a new foster family; a single mom of nine children; a physician who is part owner of that movie theater with the old-fashioned marquee.
Seemingly small moments that are huge for the people involved, and integral to the story of Small Town America.
The Legacy Story of Don and Betty Lynn
For me, that work focused on Don and Betty Lynn. In this tight-knit, generations-linked land, I learned of them from a Dunklin County commissioner who shared them as a representation of the area’s agricultural heritage – with good reason.
Don, 92, and Betty, 88, are still farming. They’ve also been married for nearly 68 years.
I learned much more about this couple over the course of several days I spent with them, a journey that began Tuesday morning when I hopped in Don’s truck and began a series of visits to check on the farm.
Don and Betty Lynn have been married for the majority of their lives. Now 92 and 88 respectively, their family tree has grown to include four children, their spouses, and more than 15 grand and great-grandchildren. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
I spent parts of five days with the Lynns. My camera was filled with images of them at home – paying bills, reading the newspaper, showing the door with their descendants’ heights written in pen and ink – and on the road to check on their farm.
Most days, Don heads out of a morning to visit the fields – he doesn’t do manual labor these days, but still checks on his employees who do – and then Betty joins him in the afternoon.
“In the morning, I do my laundry, pay the bills, clean the house,” Betty said. “Then my afternoons are free to spend with him.”
To me, their story was beautiful for a number of reasons. It represents a cross-generational link in the area’s agricultural story. The Lynns have their hand in about 1,500 acres – some of which they own, others that they lease – which is small in comparison to some other farmers these days with many thousand acres. Although I couldn’t confirm it, Don may be the oldest farmer still working in the area.
It was something his father did, and it’s something Don always knew he wanted to do.
“You’re kind of your own boss,” he said. “It’s very satisfying.”
Betty was of the opposite mind – until she met Don.
“I knew I really liked him,” Betty said. “My dad really liked him – I think that might have been a deciding factor.”
The couple ultimately wed just three months after they met on Dec. 8, 1956. Their family tree has grown to include four children and their spouses, and more than 15 grand- and great-grand-children.
As Betty puts it: “It’s been a good life – it really has.”
Their story is the type the workshop documents: People who are living their lives in “everyday” ways. But it’s those stories that ultimately show the lifeblood of the community.
The Lynns pause at their kitchen table while Betty pays bills. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
The Lynns were married Dec. 8, 1956, after a three-month-long whirlwind courtship. That moment is captured in the photo at left. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
A door takes one to the past in the Lynns’ home. It’s filled with names and heights of family members, marking moments as well as time. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)
Looking Forward With Greater Focus
The conclusion of the week’s work found us at the Kennett Fire Station #2, which stands along the town’s main drag and in front of the Delta Fair, one of the biggest events of the year. Inside the open area where fire trucks typically stand guard, a selection of prints were on display for the town to see.
It was a moment of nervousness – Would people think that the town’s story was accurately told? – but also a moment of deep satisfaction. Rarely do you see so much work completed at one place.
Instead of going to the show, I took the Lynns a number of prints I made of their pictures. I dropped them by their house that afternoon, and I was relieved and pleased that they felt they were a good representation of their lives. A special moment was when Don said that he liked the image of Betty sitting on his lap the best; it was my favorite, too, because of the emotion it shared.
Time moves fast, and those moments can get lost or overlooked as unimportant because they are everyday. But “everyday” means “every day” – and is what really comprises our lives.
That’s why I think this workshop and its philosophy is so important: Even without the MPW, we all have a concentrated opportunity to connect and share, and perhaps even more importantly to think and see the world around us a little bit differently.
I feel I gained a greater grasp of these details as they relate to photography through my time in the MPW. But I also know that each of us can think the same in our lives. It simply takes slowing down, appreciating, recognizing and savoring the small moments that define our communities and our lives – particularly in rural America.
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