A Photo Teacher |

This is the last week to see the exhibition, Field Work – Documenting California’s Migrant Farm Labor Experience from 1935 to 2003, at the San Diego State University Art Gallery. The exhibition is organized and curated by Tina Yapelli, Director of the University Art Gallery and is presented in conjunction with An Enduring Voice for California: A Celebration of John Steinbeck, a month-long program on the writer best-known for The Grapes of Wrath. The exhibition features the work of Horace Bristol, Louis Hock, Dorothea Lange, Roger Minick and myself. My contribution is 14 photographs from the portfolio, Los Vendimiadores – The Grapepickers.

© Horace Bristol, Tom Joad, 1938, from The Grapes of Wrath Portfolio, courtesy of the Estate of Horace Bristol and Katrina Doerner Photographs, Brooklyn, New York

© Louis Hock, Nightscope #3, from Nightscope Series, 2001-2003

© Dorothea Lange, Untitled (two men brushing tomato plants near Indio), 1935, collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois

© Roger Minick, Asparagus Picker, from Delta Portfolio: Photographs from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, 1968, collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois

© Paul Turounet, from the series Los Vendimiadores – The Grapepickers, 1988

Paul Turounet photographed alongside undocumented workers harvesting grapes in Northern California’s wine-rich Alexander Valley. By being there he brings us along as well, to this privileged vantage point. From Turounet’s perspective, the workers seem proud and productive. There is no sense here of misused victims of a heartless agri-system. For too long we have seen these workers dehumanized in pictures, presented as objects of pity. But Turounet offers a different view. He uses the camera essentially as an equal sign; the subject on one side of the lens is equal to the photographer on the other side. As the audience viewing these images, then, we are identified in the same way. The workers look back at us, as curious as we are about them. These photographs, drawn from Turounet’s 1989 series Los Vendimiadores (the Grapepickers), reprise the subject of Bristol’s images and provide a contemporary context for revisiting the themes of Steinbeck’s novel.

from the exhibition brochure by Arthur Ollman, Director of the School of Art, Design and Art History at San Diego State University and former/founding director of the Museum of Photographic Arts.

The exhibition closes on Wednesday, May 2. The gallery hours are 12:00 to 4:00, Monday – Thursday and Saturday.

Exhibition review by Robert Pincus of the San Diego Union Tribune

Thank you to Tina for the opportunity to exhibit with such thoughtful artists and to Arthur for the kind and generous words.