I’ve recently returned home from Guatemala. My wife and and I were part of a medical mission trip that included two medical doctors, a dentist, and a pharmacist (that would be my wife, Jennie). She was voted MVP of the trip because of all the work and preparation she did to help make the trip a success. I’m proud of her. As for me, well officially I was supposed to be the pharmacy technician and do everything my wife told me to do (I have lots of practice). As it turned out, my aptitude for all things medical falls in the lowest 5 percentile. I have difficulty telling the difference between an antacid and a suppository. Don’t come to me for help.
Therefore, for the most part I was set free to roam among the people and take pictures. That worked out pretty well, huh? I took over 2100 photos. Over the next few weeks (and probably months) I’ll be posting a few of them. Surely, in all those photos I can find a few worth sharing. I’ll also be working on at least one more photo book (and probably more) that I’ll publish through blurb.com. If you haven’t seen my other photo books you can check them out here.
Just to whet your appetite, here’s a couple of previews of what I saw and experienced.
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I bought my first camera in 1976. I think it cost me about $179 ( a great deal of money for a 20-year-old college student 33 years ago). It was a Vivitar SLR and had a couple of lenses with screw on mounts. This meant that every time I wanted to use the telephoto I had to laboriously unscrew one lens and screw on the other. By then I had missed whatever shot I had in mind.
I bought the camera because I was going to Maryland’s Eastern Shore for the summer and wanted to record my memories. My task for the summer was to work with migrant farm workers living in the area. The workers lived in sub-standard housing erected in camps on the individual farms. They worked in the fields from sun-up to sun-down for pennies a bushel. They had no transportation except that provided them by the landowner. They had no medical care and few basic necessities. It was my first introduction to real poverty.
Although I can no longer put my hands on those pictures from three decades ago, I still remember quite vividly the snapshots of the faces–a teenage mother holding her baby on her hip, an old woman sweeping the dirt in front of the cook house in her camp, young muscled men lifting bushels of vegetables on their shoulders, an old man sitting in a torn overstuffed chair discarded from a flea market. Taking those pictures not only captured a moment in time, it allowed the memory to become part of me.
I thought about this first camera and my experiences in Maryland today because I was listening to a CD book by Octavia Butler entitled Kindred. This 1979 classic is a wonderful story about the oppression of slaves in early 19th century Maryland. Most of the story actually takes place just a few miles from Easton, MD where I spent my summer. Butler vividly describes the brutal treatment of slaves that was an accepted part of the culture of that day. She paints word pictures of beatings, inhumane conditions, rape, hard labor in the fields, and the cost of running away (among many other atrocities).
It occurred to me that 150 years after the slavery conditions on the Eastern Shore there were still Blacks, shirtless in the hot sun, who spent their days in back-breaking work. They picked crops for landowners, bending over a 1000 times a day to snatch a tomato or cucumber. Although some may argue that the Blacks I met in 1976 were free and could leave at anytime. The reality was that they had no money, no transportation, and no where to go.
What I saw in 1976 was poverty. I was less aware of the oppression and even slave-like conditions. I haven’t been back to Maryland’s Eastern Shore since 1976, so I can’t comment on the work conditions of the farm labor now. But whether I’m in 1976 Maryland or 2009 Oklahoma, I want to see the injustice that has been part of the human experience since the beginning of time. God forgive me for my blindness. Help me to see.
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