Higginson Arkansas. Picture of Missouri Pacific Railroad oilers.

Here'a another Searcy vicinity railroad pic showing a Railroad Hand-Pump Section Car used for line maintenance and inspection.

That's  my cousin's grandfather on the car.

Well I am not a Disfarmer fan. His subjects may be interesting but I find his photographs boring. The subjects are stiffly posed with as drab a backdrop as one could find.

Having said that, I will present some information I find interesting.

He was born Michael Meyer, and meier means “dairy farmer” in German; his new name, Disfarmer, is thought to have signified a rebellion against his rural surroundings and his family.

Disfarmer earned a meager living off the country farmers and ordinary people. He charged twenty-five to fifty cents for the portraits—commonly referred to as “penny portraits”—that were intended as tokens to be given to family and friends. This strategy provided a wealth of subjects. He occasionally ventured outside the studio, though it seems none of those images survives.

Disfarmer’s approach was simple. Though he used some props in his early photographs, the settings became more and more bare as his work evolved. Stark realism characterizes these portraits. His subjects, sometimes an individual, sometimes groups or families, were rarely captured smiling or interacting. Instead, they have a natural, often solemn expression, never coerced. The sitters are often in their Sunday best, though sometimes they look as though they have just left the fields. Disfarmer’s photographs can be mistaken for those taken by artists and government photographers during the Depression to document the American human condition, but his images are not intended to be among those. Instead, many have noticed his unfailing ability to capture those sentiments despite the intention that the photographs be “penny portraits.” The result is a collection of images of ordinary rural people that captures the essence of a time, a place, and the people who occupied it.

Read more here.

Here are two Disfarmer Photographs. Looks like the same soldier posing.