-I was like everybody else,” says photographer Celia
Roberts. “I’d go to the grocery store and get some broccoli and not
think, “Might that last hand that touched it be the one that picked
it?” “””Lest we also forget, Roberts is here to remind us.
“Gracias,” her bilingual, year 2000 calendar, illuminates the lives
of farm workers who contribute to our tables. Her photographic
essay began in 1992, when she was commissioned by the Farmworker
Health Services of Colorado to undertake a black-and-white study of
the state’s field workers. “People say, “These are nice, but why do
you have all these pictures of Mexico?” I say, “Sorry, these are
right here.” “””Most of the calendar’s photos were shot in Delta
and Montrose counties, she says, on Colorado’s Western Slope, where
Roberts has lived for seven years. The rest were taken in Arizona,
Texas and Kentucky. She says her project was in the documentary
tradition of photographer Dorothea Lange, who worked for the
federal government chronicling the Dust-bowl era’s itinerant
population. But unlike Lange’s stark portraits, which Roberts says
she admires but wouldn’t want on her wall for a month, these photos
are a celebration. That’s not to say her subjects have it easy:
Almost all migrant families have incomes below poverty level, she
says, often earning less than $6,500 per year. Roberts says most
workers tell her, “You know, all we want is a thank you.” Now they
have one.
“Gracias’ is $10.95. A portion of the
proceeds from its sale will be donated to the National Center for
Farmworker Health, the Harvest of Hope Foundation and the
César E. Chçvez Foundation. To purchase it, or other farm
worker photographs, contact Celia Roberts at P.O. Box 5, Paonia, CO
81428, celia@paonia.com or 970/527-4457.
*Karen
Mockler
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Gracias.
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