New Book Captures Hoosierness in 142 Captivating (and Quirky) Images

Somehow, they pulled it off—gathered hundreds of photographs, taken on the same day all across Indiana earlier this year, and selected the ones that, together, create a vivid and authentic portrait of the state, it’s people, places, institutions, and experiences. The result is One Day in May: 24 Hours in the Life of Indiana, a compact yet lovely (and obsessively flippable) paperback released today by Quarry Books, an imprint of Indiana University Press.

The images, which span from 2:44 a.m. to 11:39 p.m. on May 20, depict scenes both sweeping and intimate, iconic and idiosyncratic, in cities, towns, and countryside. “It was a normal spring day in the Hoosier State, paradoxically full of the mundane and mighty, surprise and same-old, all wrapped in routine,” notes the preface to the book, which was edited by Gary Dunham. “But it was not an entirely typical day. On May 20, 2016, in Indiana’s two-hundredth year, Hoosiers chose to share their Friday together with the future. Hundreds across the state—and we mean everywhere—took photos that symbolized something meaningful about those twenty-four hours and sent them to us at Indiana University Press.”

A few of those photos appear here.

Photos and cover image courtesy Indiana University Press