Presentation for the Center for Adivasi Research and Development
April 27, 2023
by Ernest Lowe
Welcome Home! for CARDv4_cmpr
The Tree Saviors of Chipko Andolan
Australian Aborigine Dreamtime Painting
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Here I Am!
Some campaign photos by Ernie Lowe
This is a small sample of my campaign documentary work with Tony Evers, Bernie Sanders, Randy Bryce, , Kathleen Vineout, & Zelda Roys
embedded in it all
I find my Dad’s stooped forward posture here
and my Mom’s tightly accounting lips as well.
Their every gesture and tone of voice
every feeling and judgment and way of seeing
all of it in my rulebook for betraying the magic
that’s right here in the splashing of soapy water.
But this boat-person Vietnamese Monk goes on to tell us
how the store room contains all of our interconnections
every star-born atom flowing through us,
letting us off the hook of ever being a separate self.
2019
Two Documentary Photo Books
I have produced two photo books and released them as pdf files.
You may download the files if you like.
Don’t Cry For Me Babey,
Here I AM! Portraits
Ernest-Lowe-PhotoBio
Don’t Cry For Me Babey revisited Part 1
Don’t cry for me babey / We fix flats, we have to— Sign on back of black farm worker’s car.
East Mendota (West side of Fresno County)
East Mendota (West side of Fresno County)
A Chicano sister and brother at C. Edel’s camp, Pixley, Tulare Co (condemned by county and torn down a few years later) March 1961
Ten year old Chicana girl harvesting garlic with her Grandmother. Salinas Valley. July 1961
Anglo mother and child too young to work in this onion field.
West side of Fresno County. July 1961. Temperature over 100.
West side of Fresno County. July 1961. Temperature over 100.
Seven year old Chicano boy topping onions, with his brother. West side of Fresno County. July 1961.
Ten year old Anglo boy topping onions. West side of Fresno County. July 1961.
Four year old Chicana girl pulling carrots (She was working continuously for the hour I photographed.)
Salinas Valley. July 1961
Salinas Valley. July 1961
Chicana mother with baby speaking at Agricultural Workers' Organizing Committee meeting held in Spanish, at Patterson, Stanislaus Co. 1960
Farm worker family’s traveling pantry. Butler's Grove, Stanislaus County September, 1961
Chicano children by their family’s shack at Three Rocks,
West side of Fresno County.
July 1961.
Chicano children by their family’s shack at Three Rocks,
West side of Fresno County.
July 1961.
Fists of farm worker working for Agricultural Workers’ Organizing Committee. Westley, Stanislaus County
Sonoma Fog Light
The last poem I wrote for Grace before she died.
I never managed to find a way
for you and me to live at the ocean
that and a thousand other dreams
I never managed to realize.
So now I drive up Highway One
through foggy landscapes–
you always loved them the best–
gathering the images of lupin in seas of grass
cedars and cypresses, sheep and cows,
barns and tacky vacation homes
all soft in their gray splendor.
I stop and walk along the Sonoma shore
pausing for you at the edge.
The sun breaks through the winter fog
shining the waves breaking up around black rocks
shimmering the water’s backwash
into flashing electric pulses
rushing to me through the milky air.
I know you’d know that vision
like you seeing your own true self in a mirror
like me looking into your clear bright eyes.
January 2014
The American Way of Death
I produced this sound montage in 1963 to follow an interview of Jessica Mitford on her book by the same title. She commented to Trevor Thomas on her devastating critique of the funeral industry in the US. I assembled the sound montage from ads in the industry press, military contractor ads in Scientific American, and music to highlight the commercialization of death.
Photos Fifty Years Later
