Leaf river township is in western Wadena county in the west central portion of Minnesota. The large share of photographs here are from Leaf River Township. The rest depict places in the immediate surrounds. The Leaf River is a tributary of the Crow Wing which it joins on the east side of the county. The Crow Wing flows into the Mississippi about 50 miles east of the headwaters of the Leaf.

This is a pretty ordinary rural place, without many urban centers and with few of Minnesota’s famed lakes. Ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Anishinaabeg, the region became a significant part of the fur trade in the 1700s and when the railroad came through it was transformed by the farming economy. Today it is one of the poorest counties in Minnesota and includes marginal small farms alongside large commodity farms.

These photographs show the landscapes, the built environment, and the people who live here. The hope is to create a link between the photographs and the natural and human world of rural Minnesota. Sharing the photographs with others deepens their value. Anyone who responds to these photographs begins to create their own "sense of place" using the photographs to kindle their own imaginations.

The photographs aren’t a documentary or objective reflection of the region. On a very basic level they provide evidence that I have lived here. The images are highly personal interpretations of my relationship to place - although they are clearly grounded in this region.  I intend that the images encourage reflection, memory, and vision in everyone who experiences them in a gallery, on-line, or on the wall in their own home.  And so through creative work each of us -- as citizen artists -- crafts our own personal sense of place. 

The images are called “inscapes” after the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. Hopkins hoped to express the beauty of places, how we alter those places, and how the people who live in those places reside in a dynamic tension between place and inhabitant.

Jamie Robertson is a fiscal year 2023 and 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The purpose of this work is to encourage young people in Wadena County to use photography and videography as a means of expressing their own understanding and thoughts about where they live. More information about this part of the project will be published here when the project gets underway.