BOOK INFO
Hardcover, 10 X 8 In. / 108 Pages / 10 Color / 70 Duotone
ISBN 9780983231691
List Price: $39.95
“Sarah Christianson's approach to this project is thoughtful, thorough and meticulous in its presentation.”,
- Fraction Magazine, December 2013
“...an homage to family farming, an exploration of personal ancestry, a scrapbook, a sociological study of Norwegian immigrants, a love letter to North Dakota, and a long-term photography project.",
- Photo Eye Blog, January 30, 2014
Photographs by Sarah Christianson
Introduction by Arnold R Alanen
“The search for home place is the mythical search for the axis mundi, for something to hang on to,” wrote Lucy Lippard in The Lure of the Local. For Sarah Christianson, home is a 1200-acre farm in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. Her parents are the fourth, and last, consecutive generation to work this land, as she and her siblings have all moved away to pursue other careers. The realization that she was part of a larger rural exodus provided her with the impetus to document her farm at this critical juncture. She combined her images with materials from her family’s archive to create a rich, multi-layered narrative about family tradition, agriculture, emigration, and the passage of time. The result is a document which not only tells of of hard toil and the declining economic role of the family farm, but celebrates a resilient, fiercely independent tradition.