Images Of Nebraska

I stumbled across this book a few weeks ago on Amazon and ordered a copy out of curiosity. Nebraska Photographic Documentary Project 1975-1977 was published by the University Of Nebraska Press in conjunction with the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.


The book is best described by its rather wordy title. Two photographers, Robert Starck and Lynn Dance, documented the state of Nebraska in the spirit of photographers like Walker Evans. Their black and white photographs are very straight-forward, a collection of places and people that they encountered throughout the state over the course of the project.

As a whole, the Photographic Documentary Project is an interesting look at the state of Nebraska nearly three and a half decades ago. Many of the photographs may be unremarkable, but that's the nature of this kind of work. I was happy to see a project somewhat similar to my own in print and enjoyed comparing my work with that of these two photographers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the images in this collection feel as if they could have been taken just yesterday. As much as parts of Omaha and Lincoln continue to rapidly change and expand, much of the state stays remarkably the same.




I attempted to google both Starck and Dance without much success. If anyone stumbles across this blog that knows more about this book or the photographers behind it, please drop me a line at josephvavak at g mail dot com. I'm curious to know if they continued to produce photographs after finishing this project.