Harold Lee Miller and Fair Culture
June 4, 2008A friend of mine turned me on Harold Lee Miller a local photographer who not only happens to be very, very good, but is publishing a book on fair culture this winter through the Indiana Historical Society Press. I just viewed the pictures available on his website and they’re quite engaging.
I know that sounds like a toss-off compliment, equivalent to “They were nice in the good parts and good in the nice parts” but each picture really has its own personality despite sharing compositional elements and backdrop. Some pictures are unsettling, others are comfortable. Some show animals and their people as partners, others show the people being very much in control. I’m not here to write picture-by-picture reviews (although I am enamored of the guy with the cow) you just need to go check out the site yourself.
Miller style is clean and simple which is part of their engaging nature because it is immediately evident that there’s a lot of passion in these photos but it being delivered to the viewer through subtle signals that cease being subtle immediately upon discovery.
I would personally like to see a wider spectrum of fair culture represented in the finished product, but even if there isn’t, the photographs on display here offer firm assurance that the book will be worth picking up.
Hoosierati 
Jim,
Were you ever in 4-H?
P.I.Z.
Nope. As an elementary school and middle school kid I spent my extra curricular activities as a boy scout. I spent most of high school as an “angry young man.”
I did however live in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania during my eighth grade year and the primary activity there was FFA. And I mean absolutely no exaggeration when I say this, I was made fun of because I wasn’t a member. I lived in DC the years before that, and you might be able to imagine what a “through the looking glass” experience that was for me.
Why?
Nope. As an elementary school and middle school kid I spent my extra curricular activities as a boy scout. I spent most of high school as an “angry young man.”
I did however live in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania during my eighth grade year and the primary activity there was FFA. And I mean absolutely no exaggeration when I say this, I was made fun of because I wasn’t a member. I lived in DC the years before that, and you might be able to imagine what a “through the looking glass” experience that was for me.
Why?