Kansas lies at the precipice of the nation’s news desert*, at its most arid across the Western half of the country. In 2022, I began to photographed newspaper offices across the state. The images celebrate the civic function, labor, and technology of local community newspapers’ production while documenting an industry under threat, as are the ideals of democracy the press upholds.
“Pictures from the Fourth Estate” is selection of photography-related images drawn from my project, “The Fourth Estate”.
The urgency to record these spaces has intensified as consolidations and closings accelerate in Kansas and across the country. The U.S. is losing an average of two newspapers a week; a third of the nation’s papers have closed in the last 15 years. In that time, the number of working journalists has fallen by more than half. The loss of local newspapers is far greater than ink and paper, it’s the fabric which ties a community together and underlies our American democratic experiment. The fourth estate has largely been exiled from small town America, leaving only more powerful national voices, and less room for civic discourse and accountability. A 2019 PEN America study concluded: “as local journalism declines, government officials conduct themselves with less integrity, efficiency, and effectiveness, and corporate malfeasance goes unchecked... citizens are: less likely to vote, less politically informed, and less likely to run for office.” In other words, Democracy loses its foundation.
In Kansas I found the physical traces of this threatened industry, but also a deeper story of my home state. These photographs have taught me how much my aesthetic sensibility has been shaped by the austere landscape of my native surroundings. This project is a synthesis of underlying concerns stretching across my career – questions of identity, storytelling, and community. It explores the political forces shaping our lives while foregrounding infrequently portrayed rural America. These photographs are both an ode and an elegy, a collective portrait of my home state and a representation of community newspapers nationwide.
