Honestly, this is a depressing photo essay... it's like the photographer was just deliberately trying to create hopelessness and despair. If this guy did an essay on California, for example, it would all gang violence, plastic surgery, burn outs and neo-nazis.

Maybe that depression is exactly what the photographer was feeling in response the subject. The work is not created to pander to what you or any one else's personal agenda may have as a happy-joy-joy road map for the world. If you don't like it, go and make happy pictures for yourself. The world needs more happy pictures for sure.

The point is there is plenty of shit in this world to get depressed over. There are mountains of the stuff. Some of us however, for whatever reason, have within us some innate need to confront it, to look directly at it, literally, and make something that usually approaches at least an empathetic understanding.

Perhaps it's the black & white format that makes the photos seem depressing, but I found the entire essay moving. It's not supposed to be "uplifting." The photos are not conventionally pretty, but they are superbly done. Each captures an instant in time, but tells a story that can span years, decades, lifetimes. There are lots of sites where you can see pretty photos of landscapes, sunsets, flowers, animals, etc., but not many where you can see real people, in their real environments, living their real lives. National Geographic it ain't, but it's very, very good.

This photo essay was to me, the obituary of my childhood. Artistic and poignant, but not necessarily pretty, it struck a melancholy chord…as obituaries do.

Born of the white sons and daughters of pioneering European immigrants, a little north of Iowa City on a farm in 1946, I left forever in 1968. Traveled the world over, many times. Lived on the golden left coast for many decades.

Yet, I yearn to be buried in my Iowa hometown's "circumscribed cemetery" along with my many ancestors and friends. And the cemetery is well within sight of our small town's "water tower" that I once spray-painted, "Class of 64" upon. This is where I belong.

Thank you, Danny and Ted

Long Live Iowa!

I spent my formative years in Kansas and these photos remind me a lot of the small towns and rural life there. The photos are depressing because they testify to a dying rural society and culture.

I left Kansas many years ago but I never lost my love of the prairie and its lonesome and low-key beauty.

that's right popson, if he did a photo essay on california it would all be gang violence, plastic surgery, burn outs and neo-nazis..so what's your point?
it is what it is...true reality
it's all how we perceive things based on our experience
obviously your life experience is limited, i suggest you get out more instead of possibly watching too many "brainless" sitcoms on the telly

All I would like to say are ARE YOU SERIOUS? As an Iowa farm girl born and raised I would love to defend my state. Being raised in rural Iowa I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. I grew up in northeast Iowa about five miles outside out a town of around 5000. My day was always filled with amazing adventures of playing outdoors, flowers, and not ever having to worry about safety. I am attending Iowa State University and plan to stay in rural Iowa when I graduate. I am studying agriculture and FYI the food we produce here in this state of dis pare feeds the world so the sweat on our backs is not a sign of poverty it is a symbol of pride.

Might add that Iowa has the highest literacy rate in the USA.

And some of the country's favorite authors came out of the Iowa Writer's Workshop in Iowa City.

I too am an Iowa Farm Girl. Its true that these photos might seem depressing but take a look at them once again and you can see heritage, pride, and the simple enjoyment of our land; where we came from! I was born and raised in Iowa. We have great schools and universities. We are a leader in agriculture and with that all the amazing technology that comes with corn and soybeans. But with all the modern that comes in, we still enjoy the simple things like jumping from falling rock on a hot afternoon. These are pastimes that generations have enjoyed. So in our rural existence that you feel is depressing we have your modern technologies without forgetting where we come from and who we are. In that I see pride and not images of depression!

I am forever an Iowa Farm Girl!

I'm an old Davenport girl, and like flite, also class of '64, with many years since spent on both of our gold coasts and many more roving about the world. I've been a photographer all my adult life and have always used black and white because like Frazier, I have been recording the stark elegy of vanishing older Americas. I've watched the farm places of my family across five states slip into either neglect or modernity, but what a childhood it was! Hooray for Iowa from a Connecticut fan.

Is this heaven?

As "depressing" as many people say these are it truly shows Iowa.... the Iowa a lot of people don't see. I grew up on a Farm in Muscatine, IA and I would never change a thing. My upbringing taught me hard work, use what you have and be thankful for the hometown attitude that Iowa instills in you. Beautiful pictures!

Look folks, anybody with a car, a 40D and Photoshop can turn out these "eerily provocative" photos, suffusing the essay with a sense of history and immediacy. It's been a part of our visual history since Margaret Bourke-White and the depression era; it sells, and it is a part of life and it's depressingly hip and poignant. Big deal. The story is about survival and beauty, not hopelessness, guns and mis spent religion.

These drips go through whatever photo school they attend and learn that you have to find something bleak and depressing about everything to graduate. Ever hear the old saw about how easy it is to play a bad guy as an actor? And that that's how most actors cut their chops in the industry?

It's because in media, life, and almost everything you, the public, are taught that the world around you is diseased and terminally ill. And it is inferred, oh so subtly, that you are the virus, the killer, the silent unknowing molester.

I have lived in rural Western America all of my life, and have seen my friends and neighbors routinely mis-characterized everyone from the uber-whiney William Kittredge to the latest liberal crusader to the latest flavor-of-the-month presidential candidate. Listen up Obama.

How bout this whine puppets: Stick around for longer than the first 18 years of your life and then judge. You'll find beauty, humor, perseverance, love, big heart, big skies, big dreams, along with the heartbreak, darkness and mendacity. Look for the BEAUTY and you'll find it.

Unfortunately our photo- journalist will have to wait a few years to run out of bad dreams before he can lighten his lens a little. It's called growing up, FYI.

lighten up a bit, critics. The photos taken in winter are actually far more beautiful in this black and white format than they would be in color. You all know how the land and sky are all the same taupe color in winter. yet the Iowa winter is beautiful, and these pics capture that.

i agree, the photo essay is a bit heavy on guns and hunting and death (a slaughterhouse? doesn't every state have some?).but it does capture a certain something, ? a legitimate toughness, that is distinctly lacking where I live in the East.

to the farm girls: your suspicions are correct, Iowa is a gem. If you leave for five years and then return, you'll have an even better appreciation of it.

Six generations ago, my family made Iowa their home.

I can find the beauty in most places.

That being said, maybe I should make my own photo-essay. I'm not a farm girl, and I'm a vegetarian. (I couldn't stand that picture of the rabbits!)

The pictures *are* haunting, and since they seem to provoke emotion, I would say that this photo essay is quite the success.

I liked it...loved it. Documenting the changes going on in small towns in Iowa is interesting. A bit sad, its not as beautifull as it used to be in my eyes. Its the ol small town shuffle going on all over the plains, North Dakota, northern Minnesota, kansas and so on. I find it to be a sad but important story. Thank you.