Uprooted
Uprooted is a documentary project about the rural farming community of Belmond, Iowa (population 2300), where my father grew up on a small family farm. Arising from a desire to reconnect with extended family and to reacquaint myself with the town, Uprooted ultimately progressed into a seven-year inquiry that brings into focus the parallels and contradictions between past and present.
I aim to counter the gap in our collective awareness of the lived experience of rural Midwesterners, conveying in a straightforward and unromanticized manner a range of roles in the town. While portraiture is my genre of choice, scenes and landscapes serve to portray Belmond at this singular moment in the early 21st century.
Carl Jung’s archetypes provide a framework for looking at the past as I think about symbols and behaviors that have existed throughout time, in the unconscious mind of us all. I am curious about patriarchal traditions and the way they have influenced my life, as well as the lives of other women.
In a similar vein, I find the practice of typology compelling for its strength in inviting comparisons within a collection of subjects. There is a precedent to this approach in the photography of August Sander. In his seminal work “People of the 20th Century”, Sander desired to describe the collective whole of German society by photographing people from every social and economic class in the 1910s-1930s.
I seek to create insight around our mutual interconnection at a pivotal time when the perspective of city dwellers is at odds with those living in the country; while shedding light on the paradoxes, complexities and social realities of rural Midwestern life.
