HONORING LEGACY - CULTIVATING COMMUNITY
A portrait series, and a traveling Missouri exhibition, for the families who have worked the ground.
The Farm Project is a record. A fine-art black-and-white portrait series of the farming families of this region — made by Joe Craig at the House of Soulmarks in Dexter — and a traveling exhibition, Mosaic Missouri, that carries those faces across the state.
Alongside each portrait, the family's own account of what farming here has actually looked like is recorded and kept. Not a story told about them by an outsider, but their testimony, in their own words, set down so it lasts.
Your family's place in it
Farming families built this region, and most of that work goes unrecorded. The Farm Project exists so it doesn't disappear with a generation. Whether a family has worked its ground for three years or for five generations, their portrait takes its place in the exhibition and in a permanent archive — a name and a face that stay.
THE
FARM PROJECT
ARCHIVE
Every person who sits for the Farm Project joins a permanent archive. Browse the portraits by family name or by county. Where a family has chosen to share it, you can also read their story, hear them speak, or watch their film.
WHAT’S INVOLVED
The portrait is made by Joe Craig, and after a little time those photographed are invited back to a viewing to choose a legacy print to keep — there is no cost to anyone for this; the portrait is the project's gift, in return for being part of the record.
For now, the farming families and farm workers of Stoddard County and the neighboring counties are photographed at the House of Soulmarks in Dexter. As the project spreads across Missouri, Joe takes his portrait setup on the road to reach the people who work the land, closer to their own ground.
THE EXHIBITION
The portraits travel as Mosaic Missouri — an exhibition that sets these families alongside one another, county by county, as a single record of who worked this land and what it asked of them.
Add your family to the record
If you or your family have worked the ground in Missouri, we'd like to photograph you. Share a few details and we'll be in touch.