Harker's One-room Schoolhouses

"Old schoolhouses are like memories etched onto the Iowa landscape, but no photographer can make these memories come to life the way Michael Harker can. There's a stark lucidity to these photographs, an unblemished exactness that makes each image worth savoring. The craft and composition make me think of a well-tailored suit that one returns to often and eventually examines closely to appreciate the careful stitching. More than mementoes of an era when schoolhouses were the hub of the community wheel, these photographs shine with the meticulous care and the discerning eye of a gifted artist."--Jim Heynen, author of the short story collection The One-Room Schoolhouse, attended one of Iowa's last one-room schoolhouses: Welcome no.3 in Sioux County "Michael Harker's crisp, clean photographs are both important and necessary as they help us remember our collective past, telling us who we are; a deep understanding that is often lost in this too rapidly changing world. Paul Theobald's writing adds just the right touch of historical reflection as he speaks of the "inevitable departure" from that past."--Bruce Jordan, Documentary Photographer, Texas Trilogy: Life in a Small Texas Town and Early Texas Schools, A Photographic History

Michael Harker has been a commercial photographer for more than thirty years. His other publications include Harker's Barns: Visions of an American Icon (IOWA, 2003, with text by Jim Heynen) and Still Standing: A Postcard Book of Barn Photographs (IOWA, 2006). Paul Theobald holds the Woods-Beals Endowed Chair in Urban and Rural Education at Buffalo State College. He is the author of Teaching the Commons: Place, Pride, and the Renewal of Community and Call School: Rural Education in the Midwest to 1918.