en espanol
When photographer Gary Harwood first received permission to photograph the migrant workers at the K. W. Zellers and Son, Inc., family farm in Hartville, Ohio, during the summer of 2001, he anticipated that he would be documenting hardship. Migrant workers continually face difficult conditions while trying to support themselves and their families. Farm work is physical, hot, and dirty. The days in the fields are long and exhausting. Growers can be brutal employers, and there is no shortage of documented cases of terrible living and working conditions.
In Hartville, however, Gary found a different story.
Here the workers and their families live in a strong, tightly knit community supported by the Hartville Migrant Center and many caring neighbors. About 70 percent of the workers return annually to this small northeastern Ohio town where they have established solid friendships and stable lives.
Over the next four growing seasons, Gary came to know and gain the trust of these Mexican American and Mexican migrant families who travel each year to Ohio from the southern United States and Mexico. From the beginning he displayed his photographs on the walls of the Migrant Center so that the entire community of more than 300 workers and their families could see what he found to be special and captivating about their lives. Though his work began with field photos, over time he focused more on family pictures, as he was invited to photograph baptisms, first communions, weddings, birthday parties, and private family events.
In 2004 writer David Hassler began collaborating with Gary on this documentary project. That spring, when the workers returned to the farm, David began interviewing the migrants as well as community members and volunteers at the Center.
Working from the transcripts of his interviews, David wrote first-person narratives that speak with the voices of the people themselves.
We both understood that the success of this project required that we earn and maintain the respect and trust of the community. Throughout this process of collecting images and stories, we met often to share our discoveries and to see where our separate paths of work met and how each complemented the other, creating an unfolding and fascinating study of a people and place.
Growing Season portrays the life of a community rich in social capital and gives voice in a new way to a group of people largely unseen and misunderstood. Our hope is that these portraits—in pictures and words—will deepen others’ understanding of the migrant experience and perhaps offer an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue about migrant labor and immigration laws.
Within Ohio alone there are approximately 130 agricultural migrant camps tucked away and out of sight along dirt roads and on the corners of farm fields. Most migrant labor camps provide housing only for single men, but some growers, like the Zellers in Hartville, allow entire families to migrate and, for those of age, to work together in the fields. In Ohio, and nationally, migrant workers have an annual net income of $11,000-14,000. Despite this relatively poor pay, seasonal work in the United States provides better opportunities than are available for these workers in Mexico and other Latin American countries.
In Hartville, the Zellers and other growers benefit greatly from a very active Migrant Center. Many of the year-long residents and members of local churches serve on the Hartville Migrant Council and volunteer at the Center. Nationally, there are few remaining migrant centers today that provide the range of in-house health, education, and legal services that Hartville’s community does. In addition, Rural Opportunities, Inc., has been offering many services—such as ESL, citizenship, and home-ownership classes—to migrants in Hartville and other areas in the region since 1985. Without all of these services, the migrant community would struggle for many basic needs, for there are few legislative regulations that support or offer aid to migrant farm workers.
Understanding legal and economic issues concerning migrant labor is important, but it did not help us get to know the individuals who make up this community. Growing Season gives faces and voices to a people more usually portrayed in abstract and generic terms and more often defined by how they fit into a statistical group or political agenda. It is against a backdrop of this unique blend of Latino culture, mid-American influences, and untiring community support that we are able to see not just their working conditions but the spontaneous joy, dignity, and richness of their lives.
Gary Harwood and David Hassler, September 2006
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