Jim Hill - Photolucida

Jim Hill

Small Places (2022-2024) provides a visual connection to contemporary life in small agricultural towns in Illinois and Iowa. I lived in a small Midwestern farm town for eight years but was always considered a newcomer. The feeling of community in small towns, where people know each other well, perhaps too well at times, is unique in my experience. While feeling a connection to the community, there is also a contradictory feeling of isolation.My world was limited and it felt like a long way to anywhere. Small Places is a way for me to better understand and honor a part of my life that passed when I moved back to the city.

I have systematically wandered through over 150 small towns in central Illinois and Iowa to capture the abundance, the beauty and the isolation. Illinois and Iowa consistently lead the United States in corn and soybean production, yet the small towns in the region continue to lose population. As farm production becomes more consolidated and big box retailers drive local merchants out of business, the small towns in the region struggle to reinvent themselves amid an agricultural bounty.

Small Places was purposely shot mostly at night. At night, the lit up grain elevators tower over the surrounding towns, providing a visual metaphor for the abundance of the region. The darkness of the rural midwestern sky provides a backdrop which accentuates the isolation of the small towns and transforms the mundane into the beautiful.

Website www.jahill3.com