My favorite restaurant in New York is Pommes Frites Authentic Belgian Fries, a little hole in the wall on Second Avenue at 7th Street. It’s true they only serve double-crisped French fries, but I love French fries, and theirs are about as good as a potato gets: What the restaurant lacks in variety it makes up for in consistency. The photographer Mike Disfarmer presents the same difficulties to an art critic that Pommes Frites would to a restaurant reviewer: He only did one thing, but he did it incredibly well.

For four decades, from the 1920s until his death in 1959, Mike Disfarmer was a studio photographer in Heber Springs, Ark., which had a population of 1,500 in 1941. For most of that time he was the only studio photographer in town, so his surviving images present a unified vision of the people of Heber Springs. The pictures he took of these country folk – farmers, mechanics, soldiers, small-town business men, their wives and families – are instantly recognizable as Disfarmer portraits, not just because the subjects are so homogeneous and the photographic technique so uniform, but because he somehow induced them to present themselves to the camera with such disarming forthrightness that we become immediately engaged with them. That look of candid openness is Mike Disfarmer’s singular achievement, but it is unique enough to warrant the attention his work is currently receiving.

There are now two exhibitions up in New York, “Mike Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints,” 100 pictures at the Edwynn Houk Gallery, and “Original Disfarmer Prints,” another 100 pictures at the Steven Kasher Gallery. Until recently Disfarmer’s work was known mostly through prints that had been made from the 3,000 glass negatives that were saved from his studio when it was torn down after his death. These, of course, were not vintage prints: Those can only be made by the photographer himself, or under his supervision, at around the same time a picture is taken, and are considered to present the picture as he intended. But when a few genuine vintage Disfarmer prints turned up recently, interested collectors and dealers launched a systematic search for more. Scouts went door to door in Cleburne County, where Heber Springs is located, asking to go through people’s family albums. The present exhibitions, and the books which each gallery published, are the results of these two years of searching.

In a Disfarmer portrait the subject, or subjects, stand in front of a plain backdrop that is either black or white. Only occasionally is there any furniture – a simple table, a bench, a chair – and then usually to elevate children to the proper height. The studio Disfarmer had built for himself in 1926 had a huge window about 8 feet wide and 15 feet tall that provided his portraits with ample, even, uninflected light: There is enough modeling to impart sculptural depth, but there are no dramatic highlights and no details are lost in shadow. His photographic equipment was simple, and he continued to use glass negatives long after most photographers had switched to celluloid. The prints are almost all in 3 1/2-inch-by-5 1/2-inch postcard format with a sepia cast, and demonstrate that the impact of an image is not dependent on its size. Because of the uniformity in technique, the interest in looking at Disfarmer pictures lies almost entirely in studying the subjects, and that brings us face to face with the citizens of Heber Springs.

There is much we don’t know about Mike Disfarmer, but we can be sure he didn’t tell his subjects to smile for the birdie or say “cheese.” They brought their everyday faces to the studio, as they brought their overalls, heavy work shoes, military uniforms, and homemade print dresses. Many of the men kept their hats on and the women their overcoats. Many let their arms dangle at their sides, but others unselfconsciously have an arm hung about their spouse, their buddies, their children, their girlfriends, brothers, sisters, parents. There is emotional reticence, but palpable affection, maybe just in the way hands are held. And to a remarkable degree, few appear to be “putting on,” to be presenting themselves in any way other than as they themselves and their neighbors knew them to be. Steven Kasher has a fine phrase in the foreword he wrote to his gallery’s book: He says each of Disfarmer’s portraits captures “the quick pulse of a disparate being.”

It is as hard to pick one particular picture to describe as it is to single out one particular French fry from Pommes Frites for special delectation, but a picture Houk designates as DF1919A is typical in its singularity. A soldier and a woman, presumably his wife, stand in front of the black backdrop, both looking straight at the camera. He is wearing his tan chino uniform with his tie neatly tucked into the placket of his shirt, a garrison cap on his head. One arm hangs down, the other is around his wife’s waist. He stares stolidly forward: taciturn, formal, fatalistic. The woman wears an attractively simple dark dress, with a white collar and four white buttons above a decorative frill, short sleeves, and a hem that ends just below her knees. Her straight, dark hair is parted at the side and combed back; her face is plain but strong, and the concern she tries to master in her expression is made visible by the way she grips her husband, one hand around his back holding an arm, the other crossed in front of her so her hand rests on his chest. It is wartime, and this is as much a short story as a picture.

Mike Disfarmer was a strange guy. He was born Mike Meyer and changed his name to one he believed meant “not a farmer,” that is, not like the rest of the folks in Cleburne County. He had a tall tale about a cyclone that dropped him as a baby at the Meyer home. He kept to himself, never married or courted, was frequently rude and unkempt, sometimes sported a beard, long hair, a Prince Albert coat, and a black hat. Atheist. His only social contact with the community was in the studio, although he spent hours and hours fiddling with a lone friend. This reclusive eccentric immortalized Heber Springs, and preserved his neighbors from the common fate of men by rescuing their visages from oblivion.

“Mike Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints” until October 15 (745 Fifth Avenue, between 57th and 58th Streets, 212-750-7070).

“Original Disfarmer Prints” until October 29 (521 W. 23rd Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-966-3978).