DISFARMER MIKE (1884 1959) Portrait of Mary Jo Seymore

Sale 2170 - Lot 65

Price Realized: $ 10,800

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000

DISFARMER, MIKE (1884-1959)
Portrait of Mary Jo Seymore. Silver print, 5x3 inches (12.7x7.6 cm.), with the subject's name, in pencil, in an unknown hand, on verso. Circa 1944

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From a Private Collector, Heber Springs, AR.
Mike Disfarmer, née Mike Meyer, operated a portrait studio in Heber Springs, Arkansas during the first half of the twentieth century. A brilliant photographer-cum-folk artist, he produced a body of work that is remarkable for its penetrating perspective into the lives of generations of rural residents. Disfarmer''s photographs are notable for their unchanging aesthetic and unfiltered gaze. He found a successful, straightforward formula that not only captured his neighbors but also the essence of the American social landscape--the struggles of the Great Depression, the heroics and uncertainties of WWII, and the buoyancy of the 1950s.

In contrast to his minimalist portraits, Disfarmer''s life was peppered with eccentricities. A loner and teller of tall-tales, he wove unbelievable stories about his past (including one which had him not born, but rather deposited after a storm in his parents'' front yard). He changed his last name from the Germanic derivation of "farmer" to one that seems to disassociate him from any family history.

Although prints made after Disfarmer''s extant glass negatives have long been available, it is only in the past few years that vintage prints have come to market. These studies are unique creations of a photographer with an unerring, sophisticated eye that conveys a visual narrative associated with the true American vernacular.