Lingering Spirit is a moving experience—a captivating book that is filled with forlorn and abandoned homes, barns, and vehicles that have outlived their usefulness. As you turn each page, you become a living witness to a past that once defined a state. The farmsteads, general stores, churches, schools, and factories are a collective monument to the generations who lived out their lives in quiet dignity. 
Once integral to everyday existence, these places and objects are now relics that lie dormant across the countryside. Often ignored, they still retain an energy—a part of the soul—of their makers and users. And, it is precisely this spirit that has been so successfully captured in this timeless book. Each sepia-toned, black-and-white image will emotionally connect you to those who have gone before, to their struggles as well as their hopes and dreams. With over 200 stunning photographs—all taken in south-central Indiana—Hoosier photographer John Bower has created a compelling visual journey, one that will never be forgotten.

Lingering Spirit: A Photographic Tribute to Indiana's Fading, Forlorn, and Forgotten Places

Arts & Photography

Bower, John

Individual Artists

Studio Indiana

Guardians of the Soul: Angels and innocents, mourners and saints—Indiana’s remarkable cemetery sculpture offers rare beauty, poignant emotion, and a renewed connection to our past. With breathtaking images by Hoosier photographer John Bower, and a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winner Claude Cookman of Indiana University, this timeless book makes a perfect gift or keepsake. 
To create this stunning book, Bower and his wife, Lynn, traveled throughout Southern Indiana, thoroughly exploring its cemeteries. The result is over 180 breathtaking, duotone images of glorious, larger-than-life marble angels, as well as charming, folk-art children carved in limestone by local artisans. There are also mourning women, brave soldiers, and adorable animals. Crafted in a variety of styles, materials, and sizes, they all radiate with the love, hope, and faith of the family members who erected them. 
The statues Bower has captured are simply extraordinary. As he says in the Introduction, "I see cemeteries as nothing less than outdoor museums. In fact, I will go so far as to say they constitute a national treasure."

Guardians Of The Soul: Angels And Innocents, Mourners And Saints-Indiana's Remarkable Cemetery Sculpture

Photography & Video

Overhead treasures are just waiting to be noticed, and photographer John Bower has focused all his creative attention on them. The result is 200 fascinating duotone images of what’s upstairs, on top, and overhead. Also included are captivating stories of discovery, and an insightful Foreword by “Across Indiana” host, Michael Atwood. 2nd Stories is an unforgettable journey into the higher, hidden realms of the Hoosier heartland. “The common denominator is that these subjects can only be seen by elevating your eyes, or climbing, above the terre firma, to which gravity, and habit, so firmly adheres us,” says Bower. “When looking at these images, you’ll begin to realize how much is missed when your visual world is limited to ground level. In fact, I guarantee you’ll begin looking up more often, and your world will become larger, more expansive, and dramatically more three-dimensional.”

2nd Stories: A Hoosier Photographer Explores What's Upstairs, on Top, and Overhead

John Bower

Sentinels. Guardians. Cathedrals. These are just some of the words used to describe the towering grain elevators still dotting Indiana's countryside. Join master photographer John Bower as he celebrates, in stunning black-and-white imagery, the majestic dignity of these vanishing agricultural icons along with small-town feed mills and picturesque grist mills. This latest book from Studio Indiana celebrates these magnificent, and vanishing, structures. At one time, nearly every Indiana town had a local grain elevator, or a feed mill. Towering above the landscape often taller than trees, church steeples, main street stores, and even some courthouses these stark, geometric buildings were the castles of the Hoosier heartland. Today, many of the smaller operations have been abandoned and stand forlornly in our midst.

After the Harvest: Indiana's Historic Grain Elevators and Feed Mills

Lynn Bower

A beauty parlor, a tannery, a hotel, drive-in restaurants, a foundry, a tavern, banks, factories, and general stores. In this stunning collection, Hoosier photographer John Bower has captured once-thriving Indiana businesses that are no more. Exploring cities, small towns, and rural county roads, he s found closed-up buildings in varying states of preservation some virtual time capsules, others ready to collapse. Bower uses the beauty and power of black-and-white to capture the essence of these places where our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends once earned their living. Contains 186 photographs.

Silent Workplace: Shops, stores, businesses, and factories where Hoosiers once earned a living

The Crosswords of America is a fitting motto for the Hoosier state. For here, thousands of miles of roads, rails, canals, lake frontage, rivers, and runways have allowed people and products to move from one corner of Indiana to another and beyond. No wonder Hoosiers have so many transportation memories those long school-bus rides, Sunday drives to Grandma's, a first glimpse of an arching river bridge, endless railroad-crossing waits, watching the slow churning progress of a tow boat with its string of barges, a first airplane flight, steady paychecks from a local auto plant, or the lonely departure from a Greyhound station. Each compelling photograph in this remarkable collection will trigger such reminiscences some pleasant, some sad, but all special.

Journey's End: Relics and Ruins of Indiana s Transportation Legacy

Photographer

Brian Byrn

Foreword

Author

Haunting images of crumbling, one-room, brick school houses; abandoned, pre-consolidation high schools; forlorn country chapels; and vacant, big-city churches fill the 144 pages of this captivating book. Also included are dramatic, sepia-toned portraits of the somber remains of a county home; derelict, closed-up buildings at a Victorian Era veterans hospital; gloomy, barred jail cells; a bleak and eerie mental hospital; and much, much more. Though most are now in decay, these once-proud structures and objects built for our mutual benefit still radiate with transcendent meaning and purpose.

The Common Good: An Indiana Heritage Built with Taxes, Tithes, and Tuition

History

Bower, Lynn

Americas

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Studio Indiana publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Studio Indiana