"MIGRANT WATER CARRIERS"
Washington County, Oregon
Early Summer 1973, Dykes Camp
Cucumbers. Acres of
cucumbers in the rich turd brown fields of Washington County, Oregon
picked by migrant farm laborers. Chicanos mostly, who came up from
Mexico to live in smallish plywood shacks built by such landowners as Ron
Tankersley, who told me, "families, sometimes over a dozen children, all lived
together in square, a 20x20 foot one room plywood shacks." Later, he served jail time, according to an article published on May 6, 1989 in the Eugene Register Guard for using illegal contractors.
I was there to take pictures of them-- and here in
the Land of Opportunity they were all seemingly proud. But these scenes
resembled another America to me, going back in time to the 1930s or
before. Bathrooms, water and cooking facilities were outside the
campground shacks.
I
was hired to document these conditions and also, to record their
stories. And so, in 1974, I took my Nikon cameras, lenses and my new
Sony audio cassette recorder with me to the migrant farms, out to the
fields, up close to show the back-breaking reality these people
endured."
I
always traveled in cars driven by Chicanos who knew the farms and
conditions, who now were living here permanently, and who spoke English.
They had once picked in these fields and now were guides taking me to
these choice areas to make documentary photographs. My principal guide
for several of the cucumber field photos was a young 22 year old
Chicano, Amador Arturo,
who was living outside of Forest Grove, in an isolated rural highland
area. He carried with him one of the pocket books from the famous “Tales
of Don Juan” trilogy and was quite outspoken. He didn't trust the
American culture and over a period of months became more withdrawn into
his own Chicano culture. But, during these days of my project had the
time to be my guide and wanted to take me to the hot spots.
We would arrive at these fields in the morning, ready to rock and roll.
I recall the fields appeared vast to me, and unending sea of cucumbers
with Migrant pickers could be seen across the landscape, all of them
working in unison. This was not a picnic. I wanted to show the
immensity, the large scale of the operation and went into the fields to
work up close. Standing in the dirt, the pickers were shown up close as
they bent down towards the ground. The effect of the wide angle lens
was that the rows of pickers would rapidly disappear into the backdrop
of the fields. Marching forward through the rows of workers, I found
many pictures. Sometimes a single worker would be featured, so that
they filled the frame of my camera. I used hand gestures rather
attempted dialog, worked quickly and grabbed shots as they occurred.
Then with my 300mm telephoto, I focused on individual laborers so that
the background became compressed, the far reaches of the fields now
right upon their backs, the workers in sharp detail. Young children,
perhaps seven or eight year old beamed at me and I snapped lots of
photos of them from the ground looking up so that they appeared to be
giants. All of the workers were proud of their work and it showed in
these photos.
My documentary image was made utilizing a Nikon F film camera. The detail is enhanced by my
use of an ultra sharp 24mm Nikkor wide angle lens. The exposure
was made on Kodak Tri-X film. The original negatives have been kept in
dark storage and are in pristine condition.
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