Larry Schwarm: Kansas Farmers ed. by Kate Meyer (review)

Author Larry Schwarm uniquely explores both traditional and contemporary agricultural practices through the camera lens— and by extension the public lens— in his book Larry Schwarm: Kansas Farmers. Noted as a collaboration between art and academia, Schwarm’s book offers a collection of photographic images captured across the state of Kansas, from deep within its farm and rural landscape. The images are raw and unrefined, and show the depth of emotion engaged within the Midwest agricultural lifestyle.

I believe this book surfaced at a critical time in the evolution of soil and water conservation policy development and implementation across the Great Plains. Farmers now face many overlapping crises, from record-setting population growth, to climate change and its dramatic impacts on local weather patterns, to harmful algal blooms and related nutrient management issues. It seems the multitude of uphill battles have ultimately formed a mountain nearly too difficult for farmers to climb. For anyone but the agricultural producer, these crises remain somewhat abstract, mostly removed from everyday realities. This book works to bridge that gap, to garner public empathy for and awareness of the complexities of farm life through photography.

While the collection of images works to the purpose of conveying the farm experience across Kansas, I found the research article by Dietrich Earnhart, “Research on Kansas Farmers’ Land and Water Use Decisions,” in Larry Schwarm: Kansas Farmers to be somewhat disconnected from the rest of the text. It certainly sets up the theme of farm-level decision making, but it does so in a way that is overtly academic in its organization and language. Its textual format stands in contrast to the visual format that gives the book its uniqueness. Author Kate Meyer’s chapter, “Cultivating Kansas Farmers,” seems to more directly connect the reader to the larger purpose of the book, introducing its core objective, tone, and format.

The efforts and work of Schwarm hint at the role of photography in capturing Dust Bowl– era conditions in the Great Plains during the 1930s. Then, dozens of federally commissioned photographers used images to convey to the public and to Congress the dire living situations in the Plains caused by drought and economic devastation. Publication of those images incited both empathy and emergency response, much needed at that time. Schwarm’s photography, I believe, carries a similar focus and mission today— to bring awareness to the changing and complex agricultural condition across the Great Plains, and to catalyze conversations around those realities.