A wave of people came to town for one week for the chance to hone their storytelling skills at the Missouri School of Journalism's 57th Missouri Photo Workshop.
In September 2005, 41 photographers, a dozen faculty, and a score of student workers arrived in Marshall from the University of Missouri. They traveled from the four corners of the U.S., and from Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy and South Korea. They found a town surprisingly similar to what their predecessors discovered at the 19th MPW in 1967: a city of 12,000 souls, with an economy based on agriculture and a fairly diverse manufacturing base.
Some things had changed; a growing Hispanic population was now adding to the labor force and trying to find its place in the community. But this band of photojournalists was welcomed with the same sense of warmth and openness as their predecessors.
The week culminated with a public exhibit of nearly 300 photographs at the Marshall High School commons. The intimate and insightful stories developed during the week spoke eloquently about the present-day community. A sense of history was added with the display of the exhibit from 1967.
Reviewed 2013-02-18