Photographer Robert A. Schaefer Jr. is an Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘Portraits of an Alabama Farm’. To see Robert’s body of work, click on any photograph.

“Portraits of an Alabama Farm” focuses on Joe Culpepper, my high school friend and Cullman County cattle farmer. This body of work is not an elegy or a cause, but a unique documentary that seeks to create a visual document of a life that is found in pieces. It is a story that is created in light, which, encroached upon by other lights, is fading.

All images were taken on the Culpepper Farm located in Cullman County in North Alabama in 2007.

Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. began learning about photography while he was studying Architecture at Auburn University in Alabama, his home state, and continued to do so at the Technische Universität of Munich, Germany. In photography he became a visual explorer in love with layering with his work focusing on a prominent interplay between spatial planes and a central image

After many exhibitions in Germany, Austria and France with gallery representation by Ufficio del Art in Paris, Schaefer moved to New York City in 1981. Since then he had a 25-Year Retrospective at the Huntsville Museum of Art (Huntsville, AL) in 2000. In 2007, his photoseries “Portrait of An Alabama Farm” was shown at the Montgomery Museum of Art. (Montgomery, AL) Schaefer's portraits of an Alabama farm focus on Joe Culpepper, a high school friend and Cullman County cattle farmer. The photos are accompanied by prose poems by Jake Adam York, Schaefer's cousin and professor of English at the University of Denver. Schaefer and York have collaborated on The Lamps Are Never Out, a book in press that responds to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. According to Schaefer, their work is not an elegy or a cause, neither documentary nor history, but an

*artistic collaboration that seeks to create a document of a life that is found in pieces, a story that is written in light and, encroached upon by other lights, is fading."The Goethe Institute in Delhi, India hosted a one-person exhibition of his Cyanotypes in 2010, and he attended an artist residency in Barcelona, Spain in 2013. Schaefer moved to New Orleans in 2015 and has taught several cyanotype workshops including a week-long one at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in 2019. He was a guest teacher there and participated in a group exhibition of guest teachers at the Kirschman Arts Center in NOCCA. He is a former instructor of Cyanotype and Van Dyke workshops at Penumbra Foundation in New York City. In December (2021) – January (2022) he had a one=person exhibition at the Sullivan Gallery (3825 Magazine Street in New Orleans)

2023 Schaefer was in group exhibitions in Budapest, Hungary as well as Barcelona, Spain sponsored by PH21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary. In 2024 he became a member of the Renegade Artist Collective and in June joined them in an exhibition at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans. In 2025, Schaefer was in a group exhibition with the Renegade Artists Collective at The Sulllivan Gallery In New Orleans from April through June. Schaefer stared 2026 with the Renegade Artist Collective in an exhibition at the St. Tammany Art Association in Covington, La. The exhibition ran from January through March. In June during Kolaj Fest, Schaefer had a photo collage at the LeMieux Gallery in New Orleans, as well as the Photo Alliance Gallery.

All images and text © Robert A. Schaefer Jr.