In the small mountain town of Heber Springs, the Arkansas portrait photographer known as Mike Disfarmer captured the lives and emotions of the people of rural America during the two World Wars and the Great Depression. Critics have hailed Disfarmer's remarkable black and white portraits as "a work of artistic genius" and "a classical episode in the history of American photography." This documentary discovers an American master, his influence on the modern Manhattan art world, and the legacy he left behind in his hometown of Heber Springs.
Disfarmer: A Portrait of America - Trailer 2:30 mins. from Dennis Mohr on Vimeo.
Disfarmer captured the faces of the American heartland at a
defining period in history. He documented the families of the
farmland as they struggled through World War I the Depression and
World War II. He captured the post-war boom and the optimism of
the 1950s as well.
- Alan Trachtenberg PhD, Author and Professor of
American History at Yale University
In 1976 a startling discovery was made in the art world – a cache of glass-plate
negatives taken by a heretofore, unknown photographer who went by the
name of Disfarmer. The pictures were arresting in their stark simplicity,
uncompromising honesty, and haunting sense of immediacy; enigmatic, yet
intimate, they possessed a strange power and quickly earned comparisons to
the work of August Sander, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn.
DisFarmer is a documentary exploring the two insular communities of Heber
Springs, Arkansas and the Modern Manhattan art world, and the long-dead
misanthrope who has unwittingly brought the two together.
Nobody famous ever posed for Mike Disfarmer,… but the portraits
he made are among the best ever taken by any photographer…
Julia Scully compares Disfarmer’s portraits to those of August
Sander, Irving Penn and Diane Arbus, and they are equal to the
comparison.
- ARTnews
In recent years, interest in Disfarmer’s work has increased as New York
photography dealers have been aggressively competing in an attempt to
acquire as many vintage prints as possible. A gold rush of sorts has ensued as
the people of Heber Springs go through their family photo albums to see if they
have anything that might be of interest to wealthy art dealers and collectors.
Postcard-sized prints that were produced for 25 cents a-piece are now fetching
prices as a high as $25,000. Although we know little of Disfamer’s intentions when
he was taking his pictures, tight-lipped as he was, it is certain that he was not
making a bid for immortality. He viewed himself as a craftsman, not an artist,
making it all the more ironic that he has achieved, decades after his death, a
level of fame and appreciation few photographers can ever hope to reach.
Richard Avedon referred to Disfarmer’s photography as “indispensable”;
his own series of rural portraits, In the American West, published a decade
later, reveals a kinship with - and likely the influence of - Disfarmer's
unblinking eye.
- The New York Times
Disfarmer’s portraits were never intended to be works of art, though some
would argue strenuously that they are. Art or not, it would be hard to
imagine pictures more pure or more honest than these.
- LIFE Magazine
Disfarmer’s own attitude was consistently and instinctively artistic, and
similar in tone to that found in the images of Lewis Hine and August
Sander. Disfarmer seemed to possess a nearly infallible ability to capture
his sitters’ inner light, to coax forth a split-second revelation of their souls.
- American Photographer
Eschewing the traditional approach to a biography of an artist (interviewing art
historians who expound on the significance of the artist’s work), our director
approaches the story from a personal angle. Collectors will explain what the
images mean to them, as individuals. What is a photograph of a long-dead
Arkansas farmer in overalls doing on the walls of a Madison Avenue gallery? We
will talk to residents of Heber Springs whose artifacts of family history have been
transformed into valuable commodities. Our film will reveal particular
characteristics of the local residents, serving as an intimate portrait of the town of
Heber Springs, which as changed little since the days when Disfarmer took his
celebrated pictures.
Rather than rely on a scripted narration track, the film will relate the story
through in-depth interviews with the participants, allowing them the dignity to
speak for themselves. The interviews will be woven into the film, along with
photographs, stock footage, and archived audio recordings with townspeople
who've passed on. Among the residents of Heber Springs who appear in the film
will be the descendents of the people originally photographed by Mike
Disfarmer, providing a direct link from the present to the past.
We will also take the viewer to New York to meet the collectors who are so
eager to acquire Disfarmer’s work. We will trace the process of how seemingly
worthless objects such as long-dead forgotten family photos can be transformed
into valuable treasures that are collected, studied, bought and sold. Our film will
be the first to bring together both the photography collectors and dealers and
the residents of Heber Springs and Cleburne County whose lives have been
forever changed since the discovery of Disfarmer’s photographs.
The soundtrack will consist of locally recorded music and musical selections by
the renowned American Jazz musician, Bill Frisell from his traveling musical tribute,
The Disfarmer Project. And, artist and master puppeteer, Dan Hurlin, will provide
a glimpse into the beguiling world of his upcoming puppet show, Every Day Uses
for Sight No. 4: Disfarmer, about the life and art of Mike Disfarmer.
DisFarmer is not a film about art or a straight-forward biography, but a
documentary record about a modern cultural phenomenon told with wit,
empathy, honesty and zeal. Directing our documentary is award-winning
filmmaker, Martin Lavut. Martin, passionately interested in photography all his life,
was one of the first to collect prints of Disfarmer’s work in 1976.
Audience
DisFarmer will appeal to a wide variety of people of all ages, including a fine arts
audience, interested in learning about one of America's masters of portrait
photography and the rich cultural legacy he left behind in his hometown of
Heber Springs, Arkansas. Scholars, historians, students, photographers, artists and
educators will benefit from the comprehensive research compiled and
presented in the documentary as a permanent cultural-historical record for
future study. As well, the film will complement traveling photographic exhibitions
of Disfarmer's work in arts institutions worldwide.
DisFarmer is the first documentary film on the subject that brings together both
the good people of Heber Springs and the New York photography collectors
and dealers. The documentary film itself builds a bridge between two normally
disparate American communities, North and South, providing a fascinating
glimpse into the two different worlds that share a common interest in the
photography of Mike Disfarmer. Public television will help to promote this rich
American cultural legacy to both a domestic and international audience.
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