Dorothea Lange’s images of ditch bank settlements during the 1930s were both icons and indictments of the Great Depression. Today, in many parts of the state, conditions are just as bad, or worse. Immigrant farm workers pay an arm and a leg for substandard housing in garages, residential hotels, backyard sheds, and derelict campers. Thousands camp in gullies, dry washes, and tickets. During the wine grape harvest in the Napa Valley, field hands take over the back yard at the St. Helena Catholic church and sleep along the Napa River.
I am an academically-trained historian who photographs contemporary events in an effort to reach the widest possible audience. I try to cut across the truncations of knowledge that artificially separate scholars from the general public. As a historian completing a multi-volume, comprehensive history of California farm workers, I ply the archives and unfold the action in heavily footnoted scholarly tomes. But I also try to amplify what is the most substantial and extended visual account of any group of American workers.
