capturing the struggle for social justice in photos

 

CAPTURING THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE IN PHOTOS by Nick Rahaim Tropics of Meta: historiography for the masses -  November 11, 2020 https://tropicsofmeta.com/2020/11/11/the-david-bacon-photography-archive-capturing-the-struggle-for-social-justice-in-photos/ Stanford Libraries, Special Collections https://library.stanford.edu/blogs/special-collections-unbound/2020/11/david-bacon-photography-archive-capturing-struggle-social?fbclid=IwAR3Wji2Df54rbubxa6xwyO2qw7wZz9wFDGXa7No5bjmBXvDhgN1BEU5di7o https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/11/capturing-struggle-for-social-justice.html The hands of Manuel Ortiz show a life of work Manuel Ortiz held out his hands to the camera, revealing decades of toil - callouses, scars and creases embedded with soil that multiple hand washings wouldn't scrub clean. Photographer David Bacon first saw him in 2015 as he pushed a shopping cart full of cans and bottles through an alley in Yakima, Washington. Ortiz first came to the United States in the 1950s under the Bracero program and continued working the agricultural fields of California and Washington for six decades. But when he met Bacon, Ortiz was in his mid-80s and too old to work in fields, so he redeemed cans and bottles to cobble together enough money for rent and food. With a single photo in Bacon's signature style - an uncropped black and white image set in a hard black border marking the edge of the full frame - he captured decades of hard labor that provided food for millions, but more importantly he reveals the continued strength Ortiz's hands hold to survive in a society that had continually undervalued his work. "It's a powerful image," said Roberto Trujillo, associate university librarian and director of Stanford Libraries' Special Collections. "An elderly man's hands, just his powerful hand, scarred and worn from working in the fields day in and day out for probably all his adult life." The photograph of Ortiz, entitled "The hands of Manuel Ortiz show a life of work," is one of 200,000 images spanning three decades shot by Bacon that are now housed in Stanford Libraries' Special Collections, which acquired Bacon's archive in the winter of 2019. The collection was launched this fall under the exhibit title Work and Social Justice: The David Bacon Photography Archive at Stanford, after more than a year of cataloging the images, original film negatives, color transparencies and digital files. "David Bacon's career as a photojournalist and author represents working class history and social justice movements that transformed political landscapes internationally," said Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, Ph.D., a historian who works in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford who worked closely with Bacon on the acquisition of his archive. "David's work highlights communities that are often ignored by mainstream media and brings them from the margins of society to the forefront." Bacon, 72 and a labor organizer-turned-photojournalist, has been at the frontlines of social justice movements since his youth, starting as a student activist in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the mid-1960s. In the mid-1980s, after working as an organizer for the United Farm Workers and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, among others, Bacon picked up a camera and began training his lens on the people he had worked with closely for nearly two decades. In the subsequent years, Bacon documented workers in the fields, strikes by teachers and hotel workers in cities, poverty and homelessness in the streets, May Day marches for immigrants' rights and even the struggle of Iraqi workers during the United States' occupation of the country following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "Activism, the feeling this work is part of a movement for social justice has been central to everything I've done," Bacon said. His work has brought him to Asia, Europe and throughout Latin America and has revealed the human faces behind many political struggles. But there's a common thread tying every photo together: People banning together to fight corporate greed, globalization and politics that both divide and displace workers and their families. "What has always impressed me with David's work is how he purposely tried to capture the humanity of people who are struggling to make it, to just survive," Trujillo said. "His work also deals with labor and laborers at an international scale that's quite impressive for the work of a single man." The David Bacon Photography Archive complements the Bob Fitch Photography Archive, which boasts 200,000 images from the civil rights movement and farm worker struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Together the two archives provide nearly 400,000 images covering six decades of social movements in California and beyond. The hands of Manuel Ortiz show a life of work captured in the single image, through the David Bacon Photography Archive at Stanford, a life's work in photos will be maintained in perpetuity. Scholars and writers scouring the archives of labor and immigrant rights activists including Bert Corona or of organizations like California Rural Legal Assistance and National Council of La Raza, all held at Stanford Libraries' Special Collections, now have access to the faces and human form behind the primary-source documents on the struggle for social justice. Bert Corona, father of the modern immigrant rights movement, and his grandson, Eduardo Bert Corona looks intently into Bacon's camera lens, but there's something enigmatic in his expression - a bemused seriousness or perhaps a stern contentment. Over Corona's left shoulder stands his young grandson, Eduardo, who's approaching adolescence and gives a quizzical look as the tip of a small American flag rises toward his face. The following year, 2001, Corona will pass at 82 years old. "That image of Bert just stuck out," Trujillo said. "It's Bert, it's just Bert. It shows his anger, his humanity, his compassion and his passion for his work." Corona's name might not have the recognition of some of his contemporaries in the labor and Chicano rights movements of the middle 20th century, but his impact still shapes the political landscape in California today. "He was the father of the modern immigrant rights movement because it was Bert who said that the Mexican people, especially Mexican workers, living in the United States, especially in LA, were going to be the basis for radical social change, and he was right," Bacon said. "A lot of the work I have in archive chronicles and documents the latter part of that history."

 

 

 

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Imaging Unprecedented Times - Protest, Pandemic & Essential Workers   An outdoor exhibit by social movement photographers of the unprecedented events of 2020, featuring photographs by: Abraham Menor, Andrés Alvarez, Antonio Nava, Brooke Anderson, David Bacon, Edward Ramirez, Eric Nomburg, Glenda Drew, Jesse Drew, Leopoldo Peña, Najib Joe Hakim, Sharat Lin, Sheila Pinkel, Slobodan Dimitrov and Susana Barron   Silicon Valley De-Bug 701 Lenzen Avenue, San José Braid It Up storefront Santa Clara Street at 10th Street, San José Beginning November 14 https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157716903934173   WORK AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: The David Bacon Archive exhibition at Stanford Libraries On exhibit through May 9, 2021 in the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford. Access to campus libraries is currently limited to Stanford ID cardholders due to COVID-19; however, the online exhibition (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon), which includes additional content not included in the physical show, is accessible to everyone, and is part of an accessible digital spotlight collection that includes significant images from this body of work. For a catalog: (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/NonVendorPubOrderform2017.pdf)   An In-Conversation with David Bacon, Kevin De León, and Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez on October 29, 2020.    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z88mWJQyGg-BbYlR1s1ZH6YHMLO3tLHd/view?usp=sharing IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH Online Exhibit, May 29 to August 2, 2020 Los Altos History Museum https://www.losaltoshistory.org/exhibits/in-the-fields-of-the-north/   TAKE A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION - IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH at the History Museum of Tijuana HAGA UN RECORRIDO VIRTUAL DE LA EXPOSICIÓN - EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE en el Museo de Historia de Tijuana https://www.facebook.com/542258639265202/videos/659536991515786   TARTINE HARDSHIP FUND Newly organized Tartine Bakery workers in the Bay Area need your help and assistance!  This fund, supported by the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union, will help hose workers unable to collect unemployment insurance. https://www.gofundme.com/f/tartine-union-hardship-fund?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet   The exhibitions in the following list were scheduled before the current COVID-19 crisis.  Public gatherings are not now taking place and these exhibitions have now been postponed or rescheduled. Stay healthy! IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021 Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock MORE THAN A WALL - THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE BORDER Spring, 2021 San Francisco Public Library DEPORTATIONS Rescheduled for a date when the gallery reopens Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago   In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte Photographs and text by David Bacon University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte 302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9” paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.) order the book on the UC Press website: ucpress.edu/9780520296077 use source code  16M4197  at checkout, receive a 30% discount En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF: https://www.colef.mx Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - click here    "The Criminalization of Migration: A Socialist Perspective" with David Bacon and Rafael Pizarro. http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Bacon-The-Criminalization-of-migration.mp4  A video about the Social Justice Photography of David Bacon: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14TvAj5nS08ENzWhw3Oxra4LMNKJCLF4z/view   En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos - Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos Entrevista en la television de UNAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18 Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte” Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/ "Los fotógrafos tomamos partido" Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.html Die Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990 EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE:  Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7 Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be   THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com Books by David Bacon The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013) http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328 Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350 The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726 En Español:   EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros) http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo) http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1 For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums

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