‘DOG Town’ Photos Examine an Industrial Working Class Town in the Mississippi River Valley

New York-based photographer Jo Ann Walters grew up in a small working class town in the Mississippi River Valley where industrial labor was prevalent—”nearly everyone I knew had fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, friends and lovers who labored in these local factories, working night shifts, calculating the material and emotional expense of holiday pay and overtime, and who often drank hard and steady,” she recalls. Her own grandfather and father included, having once owned a small sheet metal fabrication shop.

DOG Town is Walters’ ongoing project that she began in 2004 exploring her hometown through the lens of an “unsparing indifferent economy,” and the lasting effects of industrialism on people, place and spirit. Capturing the forgotten places—bad neighborhoods, vacant lots and burned-out buildings—Walters pieces together a look at what she calls the “deep scars of industrialism,” while simultaneously creating a tribute of sorts, an elegy collectively honoring and mourning her father and the men who have put in the years of work.

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