Portraits: Faces and Profiles of Utility
by Matt Niebuhr
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FILE is pleased to present a Portraits: Faces and Profiles of Utility, a selection of images by photographer Matt Niebuhr. In this collection of photographs from different regions of Iowa, he seeks to record a disappearing type of barns and corn cribs that are found through out the Midwest on "old family farmsteads". Matt believes that
In the age of massively industrialized agriculture the purpose and usefulness of these structures is shifting and becoming marginalized. Generations of family farms are in danger of becoming marginalized, the farmsteads, quickly obsolete. By avoiding the quaint picturesque, my images seek to expand upon an objective recording to present a suggestion of surrogate "Portraits" of the "last standing".
The images of these structures are stark and beautiful, yet filled with sadness.