In fall of 2022, the UC Merced Library hosted an exhibition of photographs by David Bacon, Two Years of Heat and COVID in the San Joaquin Valley. Over the course of the pandemic, rural farming communities in the Valley endured some of the highest infection rates in the state and the extreme temperatures of two heat dome events.
The 67 photographs and five oral history panels focus on the daily lives of farmworkers and their families, including Filipino immigrants and indigenous Mexican migrants who did much of the essential labor in the fields. Photographs document farmworkers laboring in 117 degree heat as irrigators and as crews picking and tossing watermelons into trucks. Bacon's photodocumentary project highlights the crisis in rural housing, the struggles of small communities for a reliable source of water, and the conditions faced by the growing number of H-2A guestworkers. Organizations that partnered with Bacon on the project have used the photographs to organize community dialogues and advocacy campaigns.
An opening reception at the Library featured remarks by David Bacon and by community organizers including Gloria Sandoval from Central Valley Journey for Justice, Mari Perez-Ruiz from the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance, and Myrna Martinez Nateras from the Pan Valley Institute. The Library was pleased to partner with Professor Robin DeLugan to bring the exhibition to campus, with additional support from UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center and the Center for Analytic Political Engagement.
With funding from the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, the Library has acquired the exhibition as an addition to its permanent collection. David Bacon’s work carries on the work of photographers such as Ernest Lowe and George Ballis who have documented the lives and struggles of farmworkers in the Valley over the past century. The photographs record a critical contemporary perspective and reveal the persistent conditions—too often hidden from view—that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis.
Farmworkers harvest watermelons early in the morning in a field near Arvin.
A worker in a watermelon harvesting crew gets a drink directly from the Igloo water container during a break. The temperature at the time, about 8AM, was over 95 degrees.
Students get on the school bus early in the morning, in Casas de la Viña, a housing development for farmworker families built with help from Self-Help Enterprises.
