40 Photojournalists Capture Life in Excelsior Springs for Missouri Photo Workshop

A group photo displayed at the Missouri Photo Workshop exhibition on Saturday captured the many participants, faculty and staff.

Now in its 74th year, the Missouri Photo Workshop has been documenting life in Missouri for more than 7 decades. The annual week-long photojournalism project brings together journalists from around the world to focus on one small town in Missouri. This year, Excelsior Springs was the community chosen to be featured. Clifton C. Edom of the Missouri School of Journalism founded the workshop in 1949, inspired by gritty, content-rich photographs of the documentary photo unit of the pre-WWII Farm Security Administration. Participants in the Workshop include individuals from some of the nation’s leading newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Geographic. Each photojournalist was challenged to find a subject willing to let them into their life for a few days in order to capture their story through photography.

The week kicked off with a social at Four Horses and a Dog Winery as community leaders visited with photojournalists in the unseasonable heat. Many of the Workshop participants started their search for a subject by talking about their interests and taking down the suggestions for leads that were given. The Missouri Photo Workshop utilized the Montgomery Event Venue downtown as its headquarters for the week. Several of the participants were without a car and were limited to being on foot while trying to find subjects, adding an extra challenge. One local family who had a garage sale on Saturday said they spent nearly an hour visiting with a photojournalist who showed up asking about the community.

Co-director Brian Kratzer addressed the participants in an opening night ceremony (photo S Jason Cole).

Journalists then took their leads and pitched their stories to editors and faculty leading the workshop. Editors listened to the proposals and then gave them the assignment. Photographers were limited to only a total of 400 frames each and had about five days total to complete the project. At the end of the week, the photographs were presented in a public showcase held at Lewis Elementary on Saturday, September 24, 2022. The prints that were produced will be placed in a vault in Columbia at the University of Missouri. They won’t be revealed again for another 25 years when they will be brought back to Excelsior Springs for display. While access to the photographs is limited, the workshop is working with Excelsior Citizen to publish some of the features here for the public to see.

This was a rare opportunity, as Missouri is one of the only states to have a program like this, and there is only one Missouri small-town community chosen each year. Originally the group had planned to come in 2020 but when the pandemic hit, it delayed their visit by two years. City Manager Molly McGovern is to be credited for bringing this unique program to town. She worked with Missouri Photo Workshop Co-Directors Brian Kratzer and Alyssa Schukar to find a staging location, offer opportunities to meet the public, and served as a point of contact throughout the week. As serendipitous as the workshop is intended to be, those featured will be forever documented as a representation of what life is like at this moment in time here in Excelsior Springs.

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