Hide and seek

Mike Disfarmer's astonishing portraits, taken in a small Arkansas town between 1939 and 1946, are starkly compelling.

There are no props, no background - just a screen, usually black, with the subjects placed in front of it as emphatically as a sentence on a blackboard.

Disfarmer hides nothing: not wrinkles, torn clothing, the edge of his plain backdrop; not boys holding hands nor a startlingly hirsute pair of female legs.

He doesn't give anything away either - an artistic preference consistent with the life practice of a man who changed his name from Meyer, dropped all contacts with his relations, and forgot to tell anyone why. (All we know is that he believed he was a changeling, a premise that raises more questions than it answers).

Disfarmer lived out most of his 75 years in one small, insular, undoubtedly nosey town, and yet no one knew anything about him - no wonder his photos combine innocence and elusiveness so strikingly.

However, the photographer can't evade history: the uniformed soldiers, the highwaisted trousers and full skirts talk of the era just as the worn faces tell of their owners' harsh circumstances, and the image of a small boy in army costume has a specific poignancy that was probably unintended.

The astounding simplicity of these oddly beautiful images tells us more, probably, about Mike Disfarmer formerly Meyer, than that unforthcoming man may have wished us to know.