Lurlena

caption: In her new dress in the back of the car on her way home from the Sturgeon Carnival, Lurlena cries, having lost the competition for Carnival Princess. The title was given to the girl whose parents bought the most votes, in an effort to raise money for the elementary school. The Furlongs, with a single income and five children, spent eight dollars towards tickets for Lurlena, but the loss is still tough for her to accept.

I worked for eight months with a family in Sturgeon, Missouri with no definitive story in mind-- just an irresistible connection to these people I met accidentally while out enterprising for the paper. The Furlong children-- six in all, including a cousin-- had a wild experience of childhood, completely free to roam their town of under a thousand residents, but were somehow, at various moments, solemn beyond their years. At the end of my time in Missouri, with a few weeks left of graduate school, their daughter Lurlena, 8, entered the Sturgeon Carnival Princess competition at her elementary school. I was there when she put on her new dress from Kmart, did her hair in a broken mirror near the doorway to their house, and while she competed. When she lost because her parents couldn't afford to buy enough tickets (what a terrible way to decide these things) I followed them all to the car. I love this picture because it represents the apex of intimacy I had with the family, and because it gets close to showing both how beautiful and how disappointing life might be for all of these kids. It says what I can't say about the heartbreaking part of their lives (though it's not all heartbreaking).

I truly loved this family, and will photograph their eldest son's wedding next year, when his girlfriend turns 18. It is an ongoing story that feels collaborative, and that's a great feeling as a photographer that I try and live up to with the stories I work on here in Jasper.