Arts & Life

Rich Saal's 'Counter Culture' Photos Track Mom & Pop Shops

NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS | By Rachel Otwell

Published November 7, 2016 at 12:31 PM CST

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Everett Vinson personalized his store in Bloomfield by placing family pictures on the shelves. They included two framed photos of his sons, Gary and Bobby, which he had made in 1953 and hung high on the wall. Everett and his wife ran the business.

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Irma Nunn, owner of the Old Mill Store in Burfordville, Mo., 1982. When Nick Stern bought Nunn's house it included the stand-alone store, which he uses as his workshop.

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Poplar Street in Cairo, Ill. at one time had a market on almost every corner, residents say. Frankie's Variety Store at the corner of 24th and Poplar streets was one of them.

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Darlene Lane Littrell, 17, worked part-time for Rose and Gary Reed in their store near Cave in Rock, Ill. The Reeds razed the old building and replaced it with a new, larger store on the same spot, but it closed in 1993.

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Reba, Gerald and Wanda Kommer at Kommer's Grocery near Metropolis, Ill., 1982. The store closed a few years later. Gerald Kommer, who has lived in Atlanta and St.Louis but has returned to Metropolis, was photographed again where the store once stood

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Norbert Pautler at Pautler's Red & White grocery in Murphysboro, Ill., 1982. His nephew, Mark Pautler, was photographed in the same space. It now is Cummare's Italian Restaurant.

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It's well known that with the increased popularity and domination of big-box stores came the decrease in demand for mom & pop shops. Many across the country have struggled to stay afloat, and many have closed down. That's certainly what photographer Rich Saal found when earlier this year, he revisited the locations of independent stores he had photographed as a college student in southern Illinois in the early eighties.

While the stores were virtually all gone - some of the people connected to them weren't - and often, new businesses stood in their place. You can find a link to the Counter Culture project, comparing photographs from past and present and linking their histories, here.

Saal is the Photo Editor for The State Journal-Register. Listen to the interview about the project: