Photographing Farmworkers in California

Awards:   Commended for Spur Awards (Nonfiction-Contemporary) 2005
Author:   Richard Steven Street ,  Kevin Starr
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
ISBN:  

9780804740920


Pages:   360
Publication Date:   15 June 2004
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Photographing Farmworkers in California


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Awards

  • Commended for Spur Awards (Nonfiction-Contemporary) 2005

Overview

As exploited and colonized people, California farmworkers have attracted such massive, overwhelming photographic scrutiny that today their story cannot be told, studied, or understood without engaging the photographic dimension. Although the work of Dorothea Lange and other photographers from the 1930s often comes to mind, virtually every photographer of consequence at some time, for some reason, photographed in the fields of the Golden State. This includes such unlikely twentieth-century artists as fashion photographer Richard Avedon and commercial photographer Max Yavno, along with the nineteenth-century masters Carleton E. Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge. Their work, however, does not unfold along neat, predictable lines. While it has both obscured the place of field hands in modern agriculture and made a case against the farm labor system as an instrument of poverty and oppression, the best of these photographs goes far beyond advertising and expose, cutting through layers of ignorance and indifference and raising difficult moral questions that force us to reflect on the extent to which, as a society, we require the subservience of an entire class of people. This volume presents 249 of these important photographs.

Full Product Details

Author:   Richard Steven Street ,  Kevin Starr
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 22.90cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   1.379kg
ISBN:  

9780804740920


ISBN 10:   0804740925
Pages:   360
Publication Date:   15 June 2004
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Reviews

Photographing Farmworkers in California is a marvelously rich, thoughtful piece of scholarship that takes its readers on an exploration of the emotionally powerful body of photographic work relating to the lives of California's agricultural laborers. . . . [Street's] passion for the subject is matched by his expertise, and he has produced an unusual work that simultaneously draws the reader into the histories of twentieth-century documentary photography, California agriculture, and the labor struggles of farmworkers -- Agricultural History


[Street's] Photographing Farmworkers records lives in beautifully stark, often haunting and at times poetic visual representations...Street's book, which includes his own stunning photography, goes beyond an anthology of photographs of farmworkers; he provides a historical overview and technical commentary at the beginning of every chapter. -California History Photographing Farmworkers in California is a marvelously rich, thoughtful piece of scholarship that takes its readers on an exploration of the emotionally powerful body of photographic work relating to the lives of California's agricultural laborers... [Street's] passion for the subject is matched by his expertise, and he has produced an unusual work that simultaneously draws the reader into the histories of twentieth-century documentary photography, California agriculture, and the labor struggles of farmworkers -Agricultural History Perhaps Street's most original achievement lies in combining a photographer's acute and sophisticated awareness of the constructed nature of every image with an historian's drive to reconstruct an accurate-and truthful-narrative of the past. In these two works, he invites us to reflect on the nature of image and texts as modes of knowledge and historical understanding in order to better come to terms with the extraordinary and moving history of California farmworkers. -History Workshop Journal Richard Street's two books offer a new benchmark in the history of agricultural labor, with a perceptive, fascinating Californian focus. Only 1,283 pages? I wanted to look and read further. -Anthropology of Work Review


[Street's] Photographing Farmworkers records lives in beautifully stark, often haunting and at times poetic visual representations...Street's book, which includes his own stunning photography, goes beyond an anthology of photographs of farmworkers; he provides a historical overview and technical commentary at the beginning of every chapter. --California History Photographing Farmworkers in California is a marvelously rich, thoughtful piece of scholarship that takes its readers on an exploration of the emotionally powerful body of photographic work relating to the lives of California's agricultural laborers... [Street's] passion for the subject is matched by his expertise, and he has produced an unusual work that simultaneously draws the reader into the histories of twentieth-century documentary photography, California agriculture, and the labor struggles of farmworkers --Agricultural History Perhaps Street's most original achievement lies in combining a photographer's acute and sophisticated awareness of the constructed nature of every image with an historian's drive to reconstruct an accurate--and truthful--narrative of the past. In these two works, he invites us to reflect on the nature of image and texts as modes of knowledge and historical understanding in order to better come to terms with the extraordinary and moving history of California farmworkers. --History Workshop Journal Richard Street's two books offer a new benchmark in the history of agricultural labor, with a perceptive, fascinating Californian focus. Only 1,283 pages? I wanted to look and read further. --Anthropology of Work Review


Author Information

Richard Steven Street is an independent scholar and writer. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a recently Visiting Professor and Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, Dr. Street has been an award-winning photographer, historian, and journalist specializing in California agriculture and agricultural labor. He is the author of Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913 (Stanford, 2004), and he is currently finishing a multi-volume history of California farmworkers.

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