A Tender and Knowing Portrait of Rural Life in Wisconsin
The picture Springer eventually took of that farm school features a passel of children gathered like a choir of angels, sitting on hay bales between their school lessons, bathed in afternoon light as if in a Renaissance painting. The photographs in “Dormant Season” are black and white, but that hint of nostalgia feels representative of rural life, not feigned. Around the edges of sweet embraces, snowy footprints, and storybook farm scenes are cell-phone chargers and television antennas, hot plates and hunting rifles, acupuncture needles and DVDs. Underwear and canning jars can be seen along with drywall and sheets of plywood; nobody is wearing their Sunday best, but the laundry hanging on the line is crisp and clean. In one picture, an elderly man rests on a couch that has been made into ...
