July 16, 2004

Photographing Farmworkers: the Aesthetics of Politics

By RICHARD STEVEN STREET

Scholars are sometimes vague about the exact origins of a book, especially when the research and writing span more than half their lifetime. Not me. Although I devoted 30 years to this study, I can still recall its violent and bloody birth.

On Tuesday, July 31, 1973, while beginning my career as an agricultural photographer, I followed the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) in the Coachella and San Joaquin valleys of California. The year had been a disaster for the UFW. In January, the

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