The Sioux City Art Center is hosting an opening reception today at 4:00 PM for an exhibition of black-and-white photographs by David Plowden, titled "David Plowden’s Iowa." The show features 90 images taken from the 1960s through the 2000s, documenting Iowa’s rural communities, agricultural landscapes, barns, grain elevators, and small-town structures. The exhibition was organized by curator Christopher Atkins and originally toured the state from 2012–2014 via Humanities Iowa. The reception includes free margaritas in celebration of Cinco de Mayo.
The exhibition matters because Plowden’s work offers a quiet, unvarnished visual record of Iowa’s changing rural identity over four decades, capturing the state’s history through its built environment. His photographs, often compared to those of Walker Evans and Berenice Abbott, resist nostalgia or critique, instead presenting a plainspoken portrait that invites viewers to see the layers of time and labor in ordinary structures. The show also highlights the role of regional institutions like Humanities Iowa in preserving and sharing local heritage.