The Spinning Head

Copyright disfarmer.com

One word: Disfarmer

Disfarmer was the name adopted by the man originally named Mike Meyers. As explained on a website that now acts as a link to his archives:

…Mike expressed his discontent with his family and farming by changing his name to Disfarmer. In modern German “meier” means dairy farmer, and since he thought of himself as neither a “Meyer” nor a “farmer,” Mike Meyer became “dis”- farmer.

One of seven children of a German immigrant family, Disfarmer produce, in the backwaters of the Arkansas farming community, and at the height of the Depression era, some amazing portraiture. I think it is some of the most interesting, fascinating and intriguing portrait work I have ever seen. I can’t take my eyes off the details that seem to exist in these pictures.

There is considerable debate whether Disfarmer was a genius or just someone who careless made images of common folk at a time of great difficulty and deprivation in America. I doubt if we will ever know for he was an eccentric and a near recluse. What whatever it is that he did, he ended up with some amazing images.

Copyright disfarmer.com

Each portrait has a power, an energy, a presence, that is almost overwhelming. The sitters are not just looking at you, but seem at times to be cursing you. Their eyes, their faces, expressions, stance, all seem to embody some element of resentment, dissent, opposition and rejection of the viewer. That is of course contradictory since the images were made in a studio and with the collaboration with the subject. And yet there is a sense in some that the subject was coerced, remains reluctant. Perhaps it is simply confusion or fear of this instrument called the camera, but it produces mesmerizing portraits – your eye is trapped in the faces and expressions. Perhaps it is nothing more than the fact that we are looking back into time, a telescope into a world that we really do not know or understand, nor an aesthetic and culture we can relate to. Perhaps it is the perceived distance that time creates, adding an additional poignancy and power to images. Whatever it is, this is portraiture that is provocative and inspiring and I have loved studying and looking at each image.