So you filled your hands

Someone went to Hecatia and took pictures.

Also, not Midwestern mythic, but post-apocalyptic Americana all the same.

I found some original fiction I wrote once during a "sit down in a coffee shop with lindensphinx until something comes out" session. It's two years old, and most of it I'd discard now, but there's also this:

All the families in this town have photographs of their relatives from 1906. That year, a traveling man came through with a horse and wagon, and a set of lights and a camera. He lived in the wagon, and slept in attics and barns and bedrooms abandoned by dead relatives when he could. His darkroom was also in the wagon, all its chemicals and washes in scavenged metal jars. People wrote in their diaries of the vapors that clung to that man, even out here in the good fresh open air.

He vanished three towns over from here. Somebody found the wagon abandoned, intact, by the creek. All those jars were open and spilled out on the ground. They’ve said ever since that you can learn what happened to him if you can see the shapes of photographs dimly printed on the rocks.