{"id":411,"date":"2019-02-15T17:54:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T17:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/?p=411"},"modified":"2024-01-17T18:49:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T18:49:34","slug":"current-exhibit-black-soil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/2019\/02\/15\/current-exhibit-black-soil\/","title":{"rendered":"Previous Exhibit | Black Soil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photography by Torsten Kjellstrand<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Torsten Kjellstrand’s Black Soil<\/strong> is an exposition of lives of hard work and the fragility of African American land ownership in the Missouri Bootheel from 1990-2018. Part of the Black Soil was Kjellstrand’s Master’s project while he was getting his MA in Journalism as a student at the University of Missouri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kjellstrand says of the work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘To photograph who people are you first have to try to figure just who they are. That\u2019s where we can get in a little bit of trouble. The people in these photographs are Black African-Americans. I am an immigrant from Sweden. No one should have confidence that I know enough about the experiences of Black farmers to take pictures that can authoritatively say anything about who they are. Add to this a history of inaccurate, often destructive, White narratives about Black Americans, and it is only fair that one of your responses to these photos should be at least a bit of skepticism.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope that what you see are photographs that celebrate the lives of people I met. I hope you\u2019ll see Ted Pullen working hard to gracefully live in a community where White farmers and bankers have most of the power while also pushing to keep Black-owned land worked by Black farmers. I hope you\u2019ll see the success of Mr. Will Richardson, who came to the Bootheel with little more than a change of clothes and a hoe and created a Black-owned farm of almost 500 acres that could support three generations of Richardsons. I hope you\u2019ll see Airlean and Willie Peat, who worked hard to make a living off of 80 acres even as the technology of farming drifted farther and farther from their ability to use it \u2013 and I hope you\u2019ll see the generosity of Ted Pullen as he worked to keep the Peat\u2019s farm viable. I hope you\u2019ll see Elijah Pullen, who worked hard to escape the life of his father, a farmer <\/em>and preacher, only to return to preach and farm when his father grew ill and needed help.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kjellstrand is an award-winning photojournalist who has been a staff photographer for The Herald<\/em> in Jasper, Indiana, The Spokesman-Review<\/em> in Spokane, Washington and The Oregonian<\/em> in Portland Oregan. He is currently a Professor of Practice at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Willie Peet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Joe and Monique Richardson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Eric Richardson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Elijah and Raymond Pullen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Ted Pullen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Monique Richardson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Airlene and Willie Peet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Grethel Richardson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Elijah Pullen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Andy Pullen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Airlene Peet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Joe Richardson with son Eric Richardson and son Justin Richardson and Justin’s son Gabriel on their farm new New Madrid, Missouri.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Andy Pullen waits for Ted to return as Ted, Andy, and Rayburn Pullen harvest beans on Andy’s land near Sikeston and Bell City, MO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photography by Torsten Kjellstrand Torsten Kjellstrand’s Black Soil is an exposition of lives of hard work and the fragility of African American land ownership in the Missouri Bootheel from 1990-2018. Part of the Black Soil was Kjellstrand’s Master’s project while he was getting his MA in Journalism as a student at the University of Missouri. Kjellstrand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","category-previous","category-exhibit","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}