PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAY BOERSMA
In 1982, I accepted a position teaching photography at Governors State University which is a part of the State of Illinois university system. GSU is located in the very southern tip of Chicago's suburbs. To the north is urban and suburban Chicago and to the south is cornfields. My family and I settled in to Beecher, Illinois, a small farming community near the university campus. This was my first experience living in a rural setting and I found it to be a fascinating place to live and to photograph.
I photographed Beecher with a Rolleiflex camera that gave me high quality film negatives in a square format that, when combined with the somewhat muted colors of the Kodak film and photographic paper, suited the pastoral content perfectly.
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