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Mike Disfarmer Photographer American (Indiana, 1884 - 1959, Arkansas) born Mike Meyer - changed name to Disfarmer View objects by this artist.

In his Main Street studio, Disfarmer captured the honesty and determination of rural people and families of Heber Springs, Arkansas. His unique portraits are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York City.

Although he lived for 45 years in a town of no more than 3,800 inhabitants, very little is known about Mike Disfarmer.  He was born Mike Meyer in Indiana in 1884, and moved with his family to Stuttgart, Arkansas in the late 1800s. After his father's death, about 1914, Disfarmer and his mother moved to Heber Springs where his interest in photography developed.

Sometime during mid-life he was taken with the idea that a tornado had carried him at birth from his natural parents and deposited him the midst of the Meyer family, which raised him. That there was absolutely no substantiation for this fantastic notion didn't deter Disfarmer from his conviction, which eventually led him to legally change him name. His explanation was that "Meyer means farmer in German." (It doesn't.) Since he was not a Meyer or a farmer, he explained, he would be a "dis" farmer. At this time, he withdrew all contact with the Meyer family.

Disfarmer was just a small-town portraitist, but he developed a strong personal style perhaps best characterized by its artlessness. He used commercially available glass plates, at first 5 x 7 inches, and in later years postcard-size, 3* x 5* inches. North light gave an even, overall illumination by which he recorded every detail of his subjects' appearance as they stood for the relatively long exposures required by the slow glass plates. He did a minimum of arranging and posing of his subjects (the rough stools and benches his only props) and obviously never tried to coax a smile or gesture. He pressed the shutter when his presence was least intrusive. He made no enlargements, apparently satisfied with printing contact-prints.

Disfarmer opened his studio in Heber Springs and photographed the local residents in family portraits, weddings, and homecoming that reflect the national spirit of home town rural America. With directness and simplicity, he achieved a revelation of character that more sophisticated photographers have attempted with greater technique but perhaps no greater success.


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