Public Project
Farmworker Blues
My grandfather, who grew up in Arkansas and served in WWII, came back to the states, and soon took the family out on the road to do migrant farm work. I heard stories from my father about picking cotton until his hands bled when he was seven, and how they lived in tents and the backs of cars. Eventually my grandparents split up, and my grandpa rode trains and hitchhiked like some character in a Jack Kerouac novel, except this was real, not a hip story of Americans looking for something cool.
Eventually, in my early 20s, I caught up with my grandfather, then living in Immokalee Florida and retired. I photographed him, and then I photographed young migrant farmworkers working in the fields picking tomatoes.
There are a few other images of the orange freeze where I grew up in California's Central Valley, and a farmer trying to put out a fire in a walnut grove by stamping on the flames.
This series shows farmworkers over 20 years ago. I hope to pick up this project again, and continue it after all this time.
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