We'll let Minneapolis-based photographer Jordan van der Hagen explain.
Midwesternism is the great granddaughter of the Chamber of Commerce chair driving two towns over to shop at a dollar store because the grocery on Main Street couldn’t make the numbers work. Midwesternism is a volunteer fire crew maintaining a station built by a full-time department for a population that no longer exists. Midwesternism is a church that once held services in three languages now struggling to sustain just one.
The result is a landscape defined by tension and continuity. Built from collective ambition, labor, and cultural diversity, sustained through increasingly scattered and individualized efforts. Created under one set of conditions, lived in under another.
These are the stories I try to capture in my work. Not as grand narratives, but through the details that remain. A storefront still lit at night. A grain elevator holding the skyline. A civic building that still carries presence, even when its use has changed. These moments point to something larger. They show how places persist, how they adapt, and how they are carried forward. I see them all across the Midwest. They are present on the lapping shores of Lake Michigan and in the blowing snowfields of North Dakota.
The Midwest, in this sense, is not simply a story of what has been lost, but of what it takes to hold onto a place when the systems and shared identities that created it no longer exist.
With that in mind, enjoy van der Hagen's beautiful (and sometimes haunting) photo tour of the Upper Midwest below.
The Maco and Some Roses—Virginia, Minnesota
Waiting for a Strike—Avon, Minnesota
The Phoenix General Store—Phoenix, Michigan
The Intersection of Fourth & Pearl—La Crosse, Wisconsin
The Four Food Groups—Port Wing, Wisconsin
The Church on Main Street—Minong, Wisconsin
The Albany Oil Co.—Albany, Minnesota
The 5 a.m. Plow—Laurium, Michigan
Sleepy Eye Grade Crossing—Sleepy Eye, Minnesota
Shipwatcher's Picnic—Marquette, Michigan
Radioactive Buck—Becker, Minnesota
Processing Advertisement—Coleraine, Minnesota
Pontooning the Sunken Dredge—Mason, Michigan
Outside of the Corner Grocery—St. Martin, Minnesota
Onto the Next Pasture—St. Martin, Minnesota
On Reliance—Kansas City, Missouri
On a Quiet Country Highway—St. Charles, Minnesota
No Light Beer—Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Nighthawks for a Small Town—Mora, Minnesota
Nightfall at Mowan's—New Ulm, Minnesota
League Night—Laurium, Michigan
Lake Superior Sunrise—Marquette, Michigan
In an Empire of Cattlemen—Kansas City, Missouri
Ideal Morning—Minneapolis, Minnesota
Hill's Hardware Hank—Wabasha, Minnesota
Happy Holidays—Horace, North Dakota
Fresh Snow on the Prairie—Casselton, North Dakota
Flying High at Shute's Saloon—Calumet, Michigan
Fix Me a Neon Toilet Mr. Dentzer—Chicago, Illinois
Jordan van der Hagen (he/him) is a Minneapolis-based urban designer and photographer interested in the relationship between infrastructure, memory, and place. Through both professional and personal work, he explores how cities evolve, how people connect to them, and what we can do to create more memorable places.
