After graduating from high school in Black River Falls, WI in the early 80s, I left the area to continue my education and raise my family. After over 20 years, I returned to my hometown and worked for several years as the reporter and photographer for the local newspaper, the Banner Journal.
Although my job was reporting local news, I felt my true work was helping to bring together a community torn apart by a history of adverse social conditions common in rural midwestern areas. In addition, this area has a horrific past of injustices and inhuman treatment of the people indigenous to the area - the Hochungra people - also known as the "People of the Sacred Voice."
The great photographer Annie Leibovitz once said, "A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people." The images I've shared in this collection are some of the people I fell in love with during the period of time working as a reporter in my hometown ... most I never had the opportunity to have a conversations with ... but did my best to love them and their stories with these photos.
- Lori Jayne
A community meeting held in Black River Falls, WI, led by Tina Quackenbush, founder and CEO of the non-profit organization Stop the Stigma of Addiction, brought together community residents and members of the area Drug Task Force. Among other things, Quackenbush was instrumental is saturating the area with the opiate overdose medicine, Naloxone at the peak of drug overdoses and deaths in the county at the time.