Mike Disfarmer

Mike Disfarmer (born Mike Meyer, 1884–1959) was an American photographer known posthumously for his portraits of everyday people in rural Arkansas from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Like photographer Vivian Maier and illustrator Henry Darger, he moved with his family to Arkansas in 1892. He later moved to the town of Heber Springs, Arkansas at the age of thirty, where roughly a decade later he would build and operate his photography studio.

Meyer changed his name to Disfarmer while in his 50s, claiming that he was adopted by the Meyers (Disfarmer is a direct reference to Meyer, an archaic German term for farmer). Disfarmer never married, and he lived alone in the photography studio until his death in 1959. While there is speculation that he was eccentric and even insane, so little is known about his personal life that there is no evidence for these assertions other than his photographs.

Disfarmer remained a lifelong bachelor who liked "ice cream, his fiddle, the occasional beer," His photographs were simple, postcard-sized glass plate negatives, costing only 50 cents for three photographs. Subjects were instructed to face the camera directly and not smile. His subjects are the small-town residents of Heber Springs as well as tourists, photographed without props, typically against a plain backdrop.

Discovery, litigation and legacy Peter Miller subsequently spent a year, while on a bicentennial grant, cleaning, preserving and cataloging the negatives. Subsequently, two exhibitions of Disfarmer's own prints took place.

93 relatives would ultimately settle a six-year legal litigation against the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Disfarmer's photo was supplied to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by the Coens after Jaynes' nomination.

In 2009, he was the subject of a puppet-theater production by Dan Hurlin at St. Ann's Warehouse in New York City.

Books Disfarmer, Mike. Disfarmer: The Heber Springs Portraits, 1939–1946. Addison House Disfarmer, Mike, Steven Kasher, and Alan Trachtenberg. Original Disfarmer Photographs. Göttingen: Steidl, 2005 Disfarmer, Mike. Heber Springs Portraits: Continuity and Change in the World Disfarmer Photographed. University of New Mexico Press