Missouri Photo Workshop: 1980 Sedalia

In anticipation of Missouri Photo Workshop’s return for its 75th anniversary, this exhibition features work from the 1980 MPW that took place in Sedalia.

The Missouri Photo Workshop has been documenting small-town America for over seven decades. The roots of the Missouri Photo Workshop are embedded firmly in six decades of rich tradition; current workshops carry principals present from the beginning. When the late Clifton C. Edom of the Missouri School of Journalism founded the Missouri Photo Workshop in 1949, he too, looked to the past to map the path for photojournalism’s future. Inspired by the gritty, content-rich photographs of the documentary photo unit of the pre-WWII Farm Security Administration, Edom promoted research, observation, and timing as the methods to make strong story-telling photographs. FSA director Roy Stryker and photographer Russell Lee worked closely with Edom in the creation of the workshop and served as faculty members during its early years.