I was riding around Kalona and environs with her one afternoon and she had a camera. She was constantly clicking pictures of anybody with what she probably thought was a funny hat or beard. Anybody wearing what she probably thought was a funny dress, anybody who was anywhere on or near a buggy or a horse. We were on the edge of town, heading east toward Riverside on 22 and she had just leaned out my pick-up window and snapped a picture of an older guy with a beard and broad brimmed hat who was driving an open buggy. He took his hand and sort of made a motion like he was sprinkling something toward her. Sort of an Amish Finger.
"What did He just do?" She said.
"He Hexed You." I replied. "They (the Amish) really don't like people (the English) taking their picture all that much." I added.
"Huh!" She sighed, obviously perplexed and indignant.
What you have to know about this woman is that She considers Herself a "Biker" and sometimes a "Witch" and when She dresses up to fulfill these roles, she is hoping somebody will come along and take her picture. The idea that somebody might not be dressed up to play a role seemed foreign to her.
I tell this story because I have taken pictures of many of the small towns around Iowa City and I will soon be in Kalona. My format will be the same as for the other small towns. Just a point and click, not meant to be "High Art." I really do not see photography as "Art" more like a craft, and I'm not really good at it anyway.
I promise the "Plain People" down in Kalona, if they see me coming on my scoot with a camera, I am not looking for funny beards or hats or funny long dresses or quaint children running hand in hand, or Amish laundry on the line, I just want to snap a few pictures of their town.
I have lived in Iowa City more than forty years, I can't promise the same thing for that place. I consider Iowa City folks as a pretty pretentious lot, a haughty bunch, thinking their very feces as non malodorous. If you drive through Burger King the pimple faced, sullen little creep you get your burger from is really a "poet" and I will constantly try and catch them with their knickers down. I will sit in the weeds and click their, drunken, drug whore images when and where I can. I hold Iowa City people up as an example of something to "Not Be."
I expect that a town with such a Healthy self image will be indignant that anybody could think of them negatively, much like my friend who could not concieve that a "Rustic" should object the having his picture taken. One of the various purposes of this blog is to make the puffed up "Hicks" of Iowa City feel like the Amish, whom they have tortured over the years with cameras.
