I am from Iowa; not a farm, as many have assumed, but a series of small towns in the Eastern half (so, in short, I’m familiar with the FFA, tractor day at school and pigs, but not in the butchering sense). I was born in a village of less than 100 people that contained a bar, a general store, a handful of houses and a jaw-dropping, massive Catholic church where my parents were married; no police station, post office, or banks existed. My family progressively moved to larger towns, though never with more than 5,000 people in total. I’m a small town girl at heart, though I was itching to get out as soon as I realized that there was more out there to see and do. Going to college really put the nail in the coffin on leaving the state and running away from everything that seemed “provincial,” “ignorant” and too close for comfort for my highfalutin, cocky younger self.

Now that I live in New York, going back to Iowa is something I relish, and I try to visit as much as I can. I appreciate my state, the food, and its citizens’ quirks ever so much more now that I don’t live there — funny how distance is necessary to make you appreciate those things. Besides going to see my family and friends, I go to soak up the atmosphere (and go thrifting). Not only is it beautiful — fields and open sky as far as the eye can see — but everyone is so earnest, helpful, polite, friendly and nice to a fault. People honestly care how you are, will stop to help you fix a flat, start a conversation about your lovely rose bushes and always wave from behind the wheel of their vehicle, regardless of the fact that they probably don’t know you. Farming may be a dying way of life, but the positive attitudes and hardworking people remain. It’s the little things.

This series of photos by Neil and Susanne Rappaport documented the citizens and oral histories of Pawlet, Vermont, a small town that seems quite familiar to my own experience. Known as the Pawlet Visual Census and Community History Project, “The idea for the project grew out of Neil’s desire to broaden his visual record beyond landscape studies and documentary narratives of a vanishing way of life. He wanted to achieve a portrait of the whole town. Life in Pawlet at that time revolved around the fewer and fewer remaining dairy farms and a growing influx of newcomers whose numbers had increased considerably in twenty years. The goal was to photograph everyone who was willing, seen in as many groupings that make up a community as possible, to create a precise image of the community as it entered the decade of the eighties, an image of great value for the generations to come.

“Each of the approximately seven hundred portraits coming from this project over ten years is a collaborative endeavor. The participants made the choices about how to be seen, what to include in the picture, and where it should be taken. Neil acted as a guide toward the final moment when all the pieces came together. With his camera he focused the eye of the future, creating a “time capsule” for the resident of the twenty-first century to ponder. The images are individual messages of great variety, but when viewed collectively validate a shared identity and sign of continuance.”

[Via Nothing is New]