Public Story
The Money She Has No Heart
The above is a quote from one of the migrant farm workers who come to the northern United States each summer to work in the fields, at times in the dairy industry, and in slaughter houses. When I began this project, one of the growers stated that he wanted me to make the photographs primarily because he wanted people to know that "Without these people we don't eat".
I have been making images over the past several years to give a sense of the lives of these "essential" workers, who this year will not be coming north, in large part because of the Corona-virus and its ramifications. It is and will be, a severe economic blow to the already economically challenged farm workers, many of whom have been coming north for years, and to the agricultural industry itself.
To say the lives of farm workers is difficult would be an understatement. Indeed it is the work no one else wants to do. Still they persevere. There are a number of statistics quantifying those difficulties, perhaps the most telling may be an average life
expectancy for men of 48 years, and an infant mortality rate that is twice the national average.
I have chosen not to identify the locations or to use the names of people photographed, in lieu of the current political climate and national rhetoric. I would however like to dedicate the work to Robert Castillo. the first worker who allowed me to make his photograph, and who passed away from heat stroke in the fields three years ago, at age 52.
The Money She Has No Heart by Paul Calhoun
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