Exhibit

Leonardo Gomez has just seconds to decide which head of lettuce is ready to harvest, and to cut and bag it. Lettuce harvesters, or lechugeros, repeat this motion hundreds of times a day, bent over double and almost running through the field. They are highly respected among farm workers and earn relatively higher wages. His employer, Ocean Mist Farms, is one of the largest lettuce growers in the world. Coachella Valley, California, United States, 2017.

This digital companion to the physical exhibit, Work & Social Justice: The David Bacon Photography Archive at Stanford, enables viewers to see all images, along with narrative text, included in the physical exhibition in the Peterson and Munger Galleries in Stanford's Cecil H. Green Library. Originally slated to open on May 14, 2020, the opening of the physical exhibit has been postponed to Fall, 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis. In choosing a body of images for the exhibit, photographer David Bacon initially selected and grouped them into six themes that reflect major emphases of his work over the past four decades: Farm Workers, Immigrant Workers, Mexico, Migration and the Border, Poverty and Protest, and From Davao to Baghdad, all viewable from this feature page. Additional images in these same categories which were considered, but not included in the physical exhibit are viewable from this site's browse page, under categories that share the same names.

Roberto Trujillo, Associate University Librarian and Director of Special Collections & Frances and Charles Field Curator, Ben Stone, Curator for American and British History and Associate Director, Department of Special Collections, and Deardra Fuzzell, Manager and Designer of Exhibitions for Special Collections, co-curated the physical exhibit.

Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, a historian of the Mexican American experience and staff member in Special Collections wrote narrative text and Deardra Fuzzell prepared the physical exhibition design and subsequent installation. Laura Wilsey, Metadata and Cataloging Librarian in Special Collections created the Spotlight exhibit, with the assistance of Ben Stone and Deardra Fuzzell.

David Bacon was consulted throughout the image selection process and the printing, design, and installation planning and for this we thank him profusely.