The Border: Photo Exhibit

PHOTO EXHIBITIONS - SACRAMENTO AND PLEASANTON The Border, the Work and the Fight for Justice / La Frontera, el Trabajo y la Lucha para la Justicia Photographs by David Bacon documenting the people and social movements of the border Fotografias por David Bacon documentando la gente y los movimientos de la frontera The Union Hall Gallery 2126 K Street, Sacramento, CA 10A-4P, Mon/Lunes - Fri/Viernes Reception/recepcion, Sat/Sabado, 9/8/18, 6-9P

Every Worker an Organizer

Every Worker is an Organizer

Photographs by David Bacon

This exhibit in the California State Capitol is organized by Assembly Member Luis Alejo and his staff, and is part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Farm Workers of America.

California State Capitol

Hallway next to the Governor's Office
May 20-26, 2012
Sacramento, California

Open to the public


      Farm labor is a key element historically in the photographic documentation of social reality in the US, and in particular the documentation of social protest.  Dorothea Lange, Hansel Meith, Otto Hegel, and the generation of the 1930s and 1940s left a body of work showing the extreme exploitation of farm workers, and documenting the early farm labor organizing efforts, part of the great labor upsurge of those decades.
    The iconography of social documentary photography was shaped by images like Lange's mother and children in Nipomo, or those of the Pixley cotton strikers packed onto the back of a truck under their banner "Disarm the rich farmer or arm the workers for self-defense!" or the growers with their rifles waiting in ambush.
  The first two decades of the growth of the United Farm Workers was undoubtedly one of the most-photographed social protests of the civil rights era.  It too had its icons -- the line of marchers on their way from Delano to Sacramento, silhoutted against the sky, or Cesar Chavez weakened by his fast, at the side of Robert Kennedy.