Month: June 2019

Small Town America

20 years ago or so, probably more I hate to say, I would frequently go into a bookshop, Waterstones or such, and after reading the  synopsis, scoop up half a dozen novels of the latest fiction displayed near the entrance. In this way I discovered new writers and strangely many of them wrote works set in small town America. I don’t know what it was that attracted me to the these, maybe it was  settings, maybe it was the ordinariness, the quirky characters, their foibles, eccentricities, failings, hopes, desires, relationships, mixed with a humanity and warmth. The story lines were often off centre away from the plodding narrative of many novels and often very funny.

Now, I find myself about to stay for over month in such a town, Red Cloud, Nebraska, population around 1100. The hometown of the Pulitzer prize winning novelist Willa Cather who was brought up there around the turn of the 20th century. In her time the population was about double, a pioneering settlement of hard striving migrants trying to cultivate the unyielding land. Those novels portray not only the protagonists, but also  the community that builds up around such a settlement; railway, bank, loan company, teachers, school, lawyers, clerks, shops, churches, opera house. All the parts for an active soap. Many of Cather’s novels and stories are set in this place, with a different name, and many of the characters based on the inhabitants of her time.

I made a quick two day visit there last year. Much of the town has not changed, still with its original buildings and restored houses of her family and the families of the novels that are now part of a cultural tour. The second house her family moved into is now a splendid bed and breakfast. The roads around the farm land are still unmade and the land is of broad expanse of fields, finally tamed.

It is going to be interesting embedded into the community for that period and as an Englishman with a funny accent, I will have the opportunity, as one of life’s observers, to respectfully take in what I see and find out what real small town America is like.

Some of the writers I discovered and the books of whom remain my favourites:

Laurence Naumoff
Tom Drury
James Finney Boylan (now Jennifer) – The Planets
Geoff Ryman – Was
the earlier, shorter novels of Barbara Kingsolver

My early photos

I have to thank my mother giving all of us (brothers) Kodak Brownie 127 cameras. I still have my album of the photos taken from age around 6 with that camera.

My mother used, herself, a Box Brownie. Here I am with that camera concentrating hard on the composition of  I don’t know what. (My father in the background).

 

 

 

In the last few weeks at the end of my first year in boarding school I seemed to have persuaded my mother to lend me that camera and I  took a few shots of the new friends I had made before we left to live in another country.

Heathcote’s Army. Bit ‘Lord of the Flies’. If you have ever experienced such an environment it only takes a slight leap of imagination to that scenario.

I think it is interesting sociologically and evolutionary, this need for group belonging and association.

The great thing was we were free, at certain times, to roam in this copse, where, in our gangs, we would play out battles, and war games. Best get it out if the system harmlessly before it gets serious later on. Nowadays the copse is out of bounds, health and safety and all that, but it was the healthiest thing we were able to pursue.

A farewell to friends. The last day of term before leaving  to move to a new country. You can see the essential character in each boy: the solid one; the shy, brainy one; the confident one; the extrovert ..

Reviewing this now and having taken some portraits, all in a casual setting, I realise that a good portrait is one where the atmosphere is such that allows the sitter to be free and uninhibited to relax into themselves and their emotion at that time. Photography being of the instant, has to capture in that moment the essence of that person.

Some impromptu portraits of mine:

http://www.ipercept.co.uk/album/impromptu-portraits

I would like to think I took this but I have to attribute this one to my mother as I don’t think I would be so creative, aged 8, to frame such a composition. I have, since, taken many photos using a similar framing.

I do remember the occasion, the sports day, with crustless cucumber sandwiches and tea. If I recall correctly, we were able to scavenge the crusts after.

Five years later, having lived in three countries, four if you include the school I went to in that period, we returned to England and to the same school and friends.

Red Cloud, Nebraska – First Impressions

My first visit to Red Cloud in 2018 with just half  day to take some photographs gave me an impression of the area.

” The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that is was still, all day long, Nebraska.”

~ Willa Cather – My Antonia

One’s  pre-conceived vision is that of flat endless plains. However, as always with preconceptions, the reality is different, certainly in the south central part I visisted.

Here land is gently rolling with long sloping hills, with rivers , fields and  clumps of trees so the scenery is broken. Just south of Red Cloud there is a preserved area of the the original prairie, full of wild flowers and birds, and grasses. https://www.willacather.org/learn/cather-prairie

 

“The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky….” ~ Willa Cather

 

 

From Winter to Spring 2018