PHOTO BY IKURU KUWAJIMA / MPW.58
- Team C
- The 58th Missouri Photo Workshop / MPW.58
- Out across the plains of the great Missouri Midwest, thousands of stories
unfold in small towns like Moberly. Here is where you see great traditions
played out in not much of a hurry and uninterrupted except for the occasional
interloping of big city ideas and modern trends. In Moberly, you can still buy
a finely-tailored gentlemen's suit at Bill Reid's store and expect to be measured
for it. Bill is the last of his kind, the last of family-owned stores on America's
Main Streets, the last Midwestern gentlemen. At her school, Nellie DeMint takes
special needs children by the hand, and heart, and walks them through life. Her's is a giving life, made all the stronger by her own personal losses. It's where a young man
named Brennan Holtzclaw dreams of playing to the lights of Broadway but
must be content for the moment with high school plays and working at the same
radio station where his grandfather worked for 40 years.
Down the block at the Moberly Towers, the Rev. Howard Glasgow insures the security of the mostly elderly residents during the week and the security of his parishioners' souls in his other job as God's servant on Sundays. You are likely to pass Norman O'Halloran on the street handing out leaflets for his politically-ambitious wife between games of golf and painting. A transplanted Brit, he can't vote but he'll make sure everyone else does, especially if it's for the Democratic candidate. Out in the front yard, Sharon Lambkin's girls, rescued from a sad and violent legacy, play and enjoy the love of a foster family that has made the difference between a good life and a bad one.
During this week, we grow close to these small-town people, normally so reserved, our hearts engaged in a fullblown, head-on collision that changes us so we can never be the same again. And we never are.
Freelance Photojournalist Maggie Steber and San Francisco Chronicle Photographer Kim Komenich guided Team C's efforts.
- In front, Team C faculty: Kim Komenich & Maggie Steber
Workshop Students: From left to right:
Deanna Ng, Lowell Handler, Jonathan Wiggs, Brett Duke, Kieran Dodds