Sunday, September 16, 2007

Lowell Davis

Okay, enough death and destruction photos. Let's change the tone a bit -- here's my friend Lowell Davis, sitting on the porch of his cabin near Carthage and looking reflective. Lowell is an internationally-known artist and the subject of a documentary I've been shooting for a few years now. I took this photo July 27, 2005. What's amazing about Lowell is that he's recreated around him the town of his boyhood. No kidding. He grew up at Red Oak, in Lawrence County, Missouri, and he loved it so much that he has built his own version (called Red Oak II) east of Carthage. There's a feed store, a church, a gas station, a fire department, a Civil War-era cabin or two, and much more. It's not an exact duplicate, but is rather "reimagined" with Lowell's pronounced sense of whimsy. Below are examples.