A couple weekends ago I helped my son move into an apartment as he starts his second year in college.
All summer I had been hankering to go to a county fair. I love everything about county fairs— the colors of the booths, the contained danger of the midway, the exaggerated foodstuffs. The direct examination of our rural history, the categorical ranking of everything from doilies to heifers, the ostentatious promenades of summer fashion. Fairs are a wonder.
I caught wind of the Minnesota State Fair happening 15 minutes away. After a strenuous day of everything you’d expect— the awkward greeting of roommate parents, the assembly of boxed furniture, the hauling of new air conditioner four blocks from a small-format Target store, I had to me to the state fair.
The trailer for the midway provider is always strategically placed, so as to make people understand who got this.
The most stunning edifice was the Agriculture Building.
Look at that B.
This scene was fun. I documented the lettering over the “Flowers” of the Agriculture building,
Then I noticed a person on the floor, angling for the best possible shot of her friends.
They really went all-out.
The absolute devotion to documenting seeds is profound.
I had a feeling, based on the placement and reverence for these pieces, that this was a big deal. Turns out that this is the person who invented the art form, and these were canonical items.
The ubiquity and sameness of the bottle belies the vast differentiation of honey types.
Once night falls, everything changes. There’s a surreptitiousness to all activity; more cover. The lights are more prominent, the background more dark-stage.
Yellows are more yellow,
I understand the attraction of cheese curds not at all.
The Corn Roast booth is a great example of representative architecture. There’s not a whole lot of mystery as to what one might be able to purchase in this building.
I couldn’t pass up shooting a cop car in front of a purveyor of donuts.
Vaccinium vitis-idaea (lingonberry, partridgeberry, The Lingering O’Mahoney or cowberry) is a short evergreen shrub in the heath family that bears edible fruit, native to boreal forest and Arctic tundra throughout the Northern Hemisphere from Eurasia to North America. Lingonberries are picked in the wild and used to accompany a variety of dishes in Northern Baltoscandia[2] and Russia. Commercial cultivation is undertaken in the U.S. Pacific Northwest[3] and in many other regions of the world.[4]
The screaming lettering always gets me. so much type.
People freaking love these cookies. Their schtick is that they stack the cookies in a bucket until its overflowing.
Some people like reptiles. The carnival aspect is cool.
Proximity to Canada is a thing.
This bas relief is genius.
The swine barn never ends.
Apparently this is where horses go.
This guy was dead serious about his frozen treat.
I love the difference between this slick typography and the brick archways of building itself.
I want to go back to you.
