In Harker?s Barns documentary photographer Michael Harker captured the glory and the decay of one of rural America?s most elemental icons. Now in Harker?s One-Room Schoolhouses he brings another rural American icon back to life. His stark and stunning photographs of these small, neat buildings?once the social and educational center of rural life, now either abandoned or restored to an artificial quaintness?encapsulate the dramatic transformations that have overtaken the Iowa countryside. Michael Harker?s goal is to record Iowa?s historically significant architecture before it disappears forever. From Coon Center School no. 5 in Albert City to Pleasant Valley School in Kalona, North River School in Winterset to Douglas Center School in Sioux Rapids, and Iowa?s first school to Grant Wood?s first school, he has achieved this goal on a grand scale in Harker?s One-Room Schoolhouses. Educational historian Paul Theobald tells the story of the rise and fall of Iowa?s one-room schools, whose numbers fell from close to 15,000 in 1918 to only 1,100 in 1960, all of which had ceased to function as schools by 1980. Moving from the state-wide story to the personal, he introduces us to George Coleman, son of a local farmer and school board director, who kept a sparse diary between December 1869 and June 1870. Young George?s words reveal the intimate way in which one-room schools interacted with the local community, including the local economic scene. Theobald ends by suggesting that these one-room relics of the past may again prove useful.
Customer Reviews:
Distant Schoolhouses October 20, 2008 There is a type of traditional photograph that I think of as "confrontational". The subject seems to present itself directly, with little effort to make us like it. Nothing is offered to make us care for the subject: no little bit of softening; or touching at a memory; or suggestion that something worth loving exists, or might have existed, within. If we love such a confrontational picture, it is because of what we bring to it; because of the connotations that we carry in our mind rather then the denotation of the photographer. If we love such a picture, it may be in spite of itself.
The pictures of the one-room schoolhouses that Michael Harker presents in these images are confrontational. The one-room schoolhouses are photographed without any mellowing influence. Instead, many of them are shot from a three-quarters angle so that one side appears in sunlight and another in shade. This in turn leads to a harsh and unmitigated contrast that is more likely to occupy the viewer's mind than thoughts about what once went on inside the schoolhouses. Often someone's picture of an old school building will lead us to wonder what life was like in its heyday, full of children and community. But these pictures of old schoolhouses reminded me only of the impermanence of what man creates.
Only in the few pictures of the interiors of a few of the schools do we think of the living who sat at the desks and prepared themselves to learn the world. Only then do we think that Paul Theobold, whose essay is included, might be right to suggest that we may have lost something of value when we switched from the one-room schoolhouse to the regional campus.
Although the black and white images presented here have a superficial resemblance to the images in the artist's earlier book "Harker's Barns: Visions of an American Icon (Bur Oak Book)", a close reading of the two will show the differences. Both the structures and the angles of view of the different barns varied more than here. Some were still working, as indicated by the cattle or hay bales in the scene, even though they were starting to run down. Others showed us their context. Tonalities supported the overall feeling. Sometimes even the abandoned barns made us feel that something important had gone on there, and even, that perhaps they deserved a well-earned rest.
I'm certain there are people who find confrontational subjects attractive. There are also folks who so love these old schoolhouses that the approach of the photographer will not be material and these folks will find this volume interesting. But for me, Harker's one-room schoolhouses remind me more of a disinterested archeology then of a work of love. Comparing the two books will help readers understand a great deal about the nature of photography.
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