Figure 1.--Here we have a portrait of a rural school. We do not kmow precisely where the school was, but it was in Cook County, Iowa. The portrait is not dated, but it would have been taken in the 1920s, probablyb thev early-20s. We see some boys wearing overalls, but not as many as was common in southern states. .

We have few images of early rural schools. Genre painting was not a form that naive/folk artists took an interest in paintings. They mostly painted portraits which is what Americans were willing to pay for. Photography was invented in France (1839) and quickly spread ti America. For the first time we have large numbers of images of these schools. For the first two decades, however, we see very few school images. The albumen process made school portraits more feasible because multiple prints could be made of an image so every family that wanted a copy could have one (1860s). We only see a few school images at first (1860s). But soon school portraits, mostly class portraits, began to become an established events. In rural schools of course, the whole school of course was photographed and not class photographs like in urban schools. Thus means there is a huge chronological record available on school, including rural schools available from the 1870s on. Mostly this means outside the school, bit there are some interior images as faster speed film was developed after the turn-of-the 20th century. this record only increased during the 1920s. But we begin gto see consolidation beginnin (1930s) and in the 1940s most small rural chools were phased out.

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Created: 12:04 PM 3/17/2024
Last updated: 12:04 PM 3/17/2024