Poggensee’s Postcards: Visiting the Amish in southern Iowa

WINTERSET, Iowa, Aug. 15, 2018 — Photographer Don Poggensee has been taking pictures of Iowa’s Amish people for years, most often in the rural communities they’ve established in northeast Iowa, like around Hazleton.  But in early August, he spent a few days around Amish families in southern and southeast Iowa.

“Every time I visit an Amish community, I see different aspects of their lifestyle and their basic, make-do attitude, as we would say, doing it the old-fashioned way,” said Poggensee, who lives in Ida Grove in northwest Iowa. “It indeed is interesting to see how they get things done, so different from how we do things with our modern ways in a lot of our farm country.”

He noted that “most Amish adults do not permit close-up images of their faces, so when I am recording images, I try to respect their beliefs on how I take the pictures.”

He shares some of them here.

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Loading up bales of hay.

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Moving hay bales.

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Up and over the hilltop.

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Produce for sale near Lamoni.

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Hanging out at Pammel State Park at Winterset.

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Amish children at play.

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We’d like to have heard this conversation!

You can write the photographer at donpog@netlc.net or comment here on his work by using the handy form below.

One thought on “Poggensee’s Postcards: Visiting the Amish in southern Iowa

  1. Don, I so appreciated your excellent photography of some of the Amish people! Many of my relatives lived in southeast Iowa (I grew up in Shenandoah along with the Offenburgers) and when I visited them, I could count on seeing some of these Amish folks — at work in the fields or driving (horses, buggies and wagons) along the highway. I also remember visiting some of the Amish communities in central Iowa and in Pennsylvania. What a dedicated group of people they are! I always enjoy and appreciate your masterpieces of photography which I see on Offenburger.com.

    John McCracken, Aurora, CO

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