Rural America

On a trip to Alberta, Canada a couple of years ago, I made photographs of some grain elevators in a rural town called Milk River. (What a great name!) I've always thought of these majestic structures as the "Cathedrals of the West". When traveling through Europe the first thing you spot when approaching a new settlement is the spire of the cathedral. The cathedral was the locus of village life and the social center of the community. In the rural West, the grain elevator is the locus of the farming community and the collaborative attempt to store and ship community products.

I started to look around my own community recently and made a few images that follow this theme. Not all grain elevators; that was just the catalyst, but rural buildings I like too.

This little elevator is located in Treloar, MO; not far from Hermann. Like most elevators it is located along the railroad tracks, except that the railroad has been replaced in this case by the Katy trail.


There is a little village called Stony Hill in Gasconade County where a general store has existed since the Civil War; at least that is what the neighbor told me when I stopped to make a few pictures.


And this majestic elevator is located in the little town of Morrison, MO. The angles and shadows "lovely, dark and deep" to borrow from Robert Frost.


And here is an actual church from the little village of Swiss, regionally famous for the Swiss Meat and Sausage Company.


Lastly, for this posting, is a great little homestead in the bottomlands west of Chamois, MO.


The images are all digitally captured, and of course in full color. But I am trying to remind myself of the rich heritage of black and white imagery that is becoming less practised as color photography becomes more ubiquitous. Not long ago (1978) I wrote the first course in color photography for Meramec College and the St. Louis region, and now its hard to remember how prevalent black and white photography was.

Oops, that was 30 years ago! Well, it doesn't seem that long...