Disfarmer: Portraits of Rural Arkansas.

Old State House Museum, Little Rock, AR. January 9th – June 2026.

Oddly the first Mike Disfarmer exhibition I experienced was in Paris in 2017. I had paid too much to attend my first large academic conference and it was a bust. Staying with a friend of a friend in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, I took the metro in and spent my days walking and looking. The first day there, I wandered in an industrial mixed-use gallery. I recognized familiar faces right away – the uncanny stares and mottled flat backgrounds. I was relieved.

Here we were, Disfarmer and I. Two Arkansans, out of place in the city.

Disfarmer: Portraits of Rural Arkansas at the Old State House Museum brings the portraits home. Featuring a variety of Heber Springs natives from the 1930s to the 1950s, this collection of photographs demonstrates the breadth of his work, including couples, families, and friends. Mike Disfarmer (b. Mike Meyer, 1882) was largely unknown during his time, and worked and lived in a small photography studio in Heber Springs from the 1920s, until his death in 1959. Heber Springs mayor Joe Allbright uncovered of around 4000 Disfarmer glass negatives in his studio after his death. These were given to Peter Miller, who later published them in local newspapers and publications. Disfarmer gained national attention after a Heber Springs couple moved to Chicago in 2004 and sold around fifty of their family portraits to a New York collector, Michael Mattis. Mattis, along with gallerist Steven Krasher, both scouted Heber Springs and greater Arkansas for original prints. Selling at the height of their fame for up to $30,000, the portraits were far from the 25 to 50 cents Disfarmer originally charged.

Disfarmer does what most artists aspire to do: create a specific aesthetic that is wholly his own. In the hundreds of studio portraits that I’ve worked with from the same period, Disarmers’ are distinct. Most impactful to the tone are his backdrops. The size and value of the backdrops make them characters unto themselves. Unlike his contemporaries who utilized decorative domestic-printed backgrounds, Disfarmer hung simple, dark floor-to-ceiling cloths. Regardless of the sitters’ poses, he composed the scenes in a way where the background was slightly too large, ominously and silently pushing in on his subjects. This, combined with the intense, flat stares of the sitters, and the use of intense dark values, created a sense of deep isolation despite none of the subjects being photographed alone: a Hopper-meets-Arbus situation.

More than an art exhibition, Disfarmer: Portraits of Rural Arkansas curator Samantha Ashley invites visitors to aid in research as well. The staff has identified over half of the individuals featured in the portraits – but the res remain anonymous. Bringing the photographs back to Arkansas allows the public not only to engage with a shared past, but to assist in giving these people back their names.

With any exhibition, one has to ask: what is the relevance to seeing these historic objects today? Disfarmer’s true magic is the flattening of time. In the exhibition, we see people surviving the Great Depression in their hand-made, flour sack dresses, supporting their loved ones going off to WWII, and then celebrating with them in uniform as they come home. Despite the photographs being created during some of the most upheaved and troubled times in the country, the consistency of the images remains: minus changing clothing styles, these portraits flatten time into seemingly one enduring moment. I choose to read this consistency as resilience.

Sources

Eileen Turan and Keith Melton, “Mike Disfarmer (1882-1959),” Encyclopedia of Arkansas

“The Disfarmer Project,” Disfarmer.org.