Klara Swedish Lutheran Church - Abandoned North Dakota prairie church #2 Canvas Print

"Klara Swedish Lutheran Church - series" (search "Klara" to find other images from this location)

This abandoned church In a very remote part of central ND was founded in 1897, shortly after statehood, and served the rural community for 100 years, closing in 1997. This series is a bit painful to view - especially to those who maybe have many fond memories here, since the condition is going downhill and the foundation looks to be in trouble on the west wall, collapsing inward (I neglected to photograph that). But I try to find and capture beauty in the brokenness and decay, and hope you will too. Places like this will likely be gone in another 20 years, so I feel that photos are one way to document and retain "what was". Images all captured 4/23/20.

Peter Herman was born and raised on a farm in North Dakota. He first became interested in photography during high-school, and after acquiring a Pentax SLR, began taking photos for the school yearbook and developing/printing B&W images in school darkroom. He continued shooting through college, taking portraits, group pictures, weddings, but after beginning his engineering career at Cummins, he let his photography interests go dormant until about 2005 when he acquired his first DSLR and started shooting scenic landscapes from around the US, but concentrating especially on rural areas in ND and WI. Many of his images were encountered while riding motorcycle down random backroads during "golden hour", searching for that magic light...