Don’t Cry for Me Babey—revisited, is an exhibition of my photographs documenting the life and work of California farm workers in the 1960s. The show was up from September 12, 2013 through February, 2014 at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley.
In this show I focused on children and their families, showing kids harvesting field crops with their parents in 100 degree temperatures. I also cover their life in labor camps and shack-towns and a day with a migrant family living in a small trailer.
I’ve designed this exhibition and web gallery as a call to innovative action, not just a window into the past. I took these photographs five decades ago. In 2013 I could go out and take these pictures again. Four and five year olds are still working alongside their parents. I believe its time for a breakthrough to end exploitation of child workers in America’s large corporate farms.
Many things have changed in California’s rich farming valleys since the Sixties: urban sprawl across irreplaceable farm fields; less ethnic diversity in farm labor; a water and air pollution crisis; an epidemic of methamphetamine production and use . . . but you’ll still find kids working in the fields of large corporate farms. Now they’re more likely to be working with their folks from Mexico, here without papers and fearful of deportation.
I believe it is time to finally end child labor on our corporate farms. Go to this page for my first thoughts on achieving this a comments box to share your ideas. Ending child labor in agriculture
To contact me directly please e-mail: ernielowe at indigodev.com.
See the galleries: