Sixty-nine portraits by Mike Disfarmer (1884–1959) are featured in the summer and fall exhibition, Mike Disfarmer : Portraitist of the American Heart Land 1915 to 1959, on view in the Jane Lutnick Fine Art Center located in Haverford College through December 6, 2026.
Disfarmer’s work came to light in 1973 when a collection of negatives was given to Peter Miller, editor of the Little Rock (Pulaski County) Arkansas Sun. After many of the photographs were published in the paper, their popularity grew rapidly. Disfarmer, known as an eccentric, was born Mike Meyer in Indiana. He moved to Arkansas with his parents in the late 1800s. After his father died in 1914, Meyer moved with his mother to Heber Springs, Arkansas, where he constructed a photography studio on the back porch of their house. Around 1930, a tornado killed his mother and destroyed her house. He built a new studio on Main Street, established himself as the town photographer, and became Mike Disfarmer.
Between 1915 and 1959, he made over 3,000 portraits of the residents of Heber Springs and the surrounding community charging twenty-five cents a sitting. Saturday was the day that the surrounding community came to town and one of the attractions for the residents was having their portraits taken by Disfarmer. Using commercially available glass plates and papers, he photographed his clients in direct north light, creating a unique and compelling intimacy. Disarmer concentrated on obtaining the most revealing lighting and made adjustments for a sitting that were said to sometimes take an hour or more.
The attention to the personhood of the photographer’s sitters places his work on par with his contemporaries Doris Ulmann (1882–1934), Irving Penn (1917–2009), and Walker Evans (1903–1975), who were part of the art world and whose images were distributed in books and magazines to a national audience. Disfarmer’s portraits are as compelling as that of African American studio photographers Richard Samuel Roberts (1880–1936) of Columbia, South Carolina and James Van Der Zee (1886–1983) of Harlem, New York City. Roberts possessed a keen eye for detail and composition, posing his sitters elegantly in a manner that exuded dignity and grace. In 1977 Roberts’ work was rediscovered in Columbia’s Arsenal Hill neighborhood when over 3,000 glass plate negatives were found stacked together in the crawl space of his family home. Van Der Zee’s studio practice covered all aspects of Black life from formal portrait work to the opening of new businesses. His vast archive was rediscovered when the Metropolitan Museum in New York City was mounting an exhibition of the Harlem Renaissance; historic photographs of Harlem were needed, as the museum did not own such works, nor did it have a Department of Photography at that time.
Disfarmer’s photos, like Roberts’ and Van Der Zee’s works, were not part of the art world nor were they a part of the fashion and advertising worlds. And their works like Disfarmer’s work, were upon their discovery in the 1970s during a time of shifting cultural and esthetic values, as well as the changing politics of the 1960s, were treated as visual revelations; and the emerging art market for photography responded accordingly. His photographs of the residents of Heber Springs are recognized today as stunning achievements for their exquisite artistry, and their profound empathy. Their landmark documentation of small-town life in America’s heartland is unique.
Many of the children in these portraits describe in their recollections as adults of having their pictures made in the studio as a time of being afraid, and the adults recall that they did not know when their photo was taken, as Disfarmer pushed the shutter when they and he were one. The titles of the photos bear this out as they have titles written on them by the sitters like: My Darling Mother, Mrs. Olive Allen; Mildred (Lacy) Davis wife of Jerry Davis; and Earl Franklin (Franklin) Landreth from Grand Mama; written in the sitter’s hand. The prints in this exhibition are mostly vintage contact prints of 4×5 inches and smaller. Many are unique as they come from family albums that were broken up. Some examples in the exhibition were enlarged by Disfarmer to 8×10 inches in size. All are from the Permanent Fine Art Photography Collection at Haverford College and have come to the collection by gift and purchase.
Mike Disfarmer : Portraitist of the American Heart Land 1915 to 1959
June 1 to December 6, 2026
Jane Lutnick Fine Arts Center
Atrium Gallery
Department of Fine Arts
Haverford College
370 Lancaster Ave.
Haverford, PA 19041
https://www.haverford.edu/
Gallery Hours
Summer Hours:
June 1 to September 1, 2026: Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
Winter Hours:
September 3 to December 4, 2026: Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, Weekends 12pm-6pm
Reception 5pm to 7pm September 10, 2026
