People Sustaining the Land
by Cynthia Vagnetti and Jerry DeWitt.
118 pgs.
Exceptional photographs and oral histories of twenty-six farmers
and ranchers across the U.S.
"After living with farm families and walking
in the shoes of well over 100 farmers, both men and women,
I can speak with knowledge about a land-based wisdom that evolves
from each farmer’s deep and intimate love with the land
they cultivate for the production of food . Like the farmers
I have walked with, I too, am amazed at the amount of life
that can be found in one handful of soil, the sound of 1000
head of churro sheep walking through a forest, the joy of neighboring
that is amplified during harvest, a show of lightening over
the Great Plains. Listening to farmers restores my sense of
security and has deepened my faith in the human heart…to
all I am grateful."
– Cynthia Vagnetti
Renewing Traditions
"For me, documentary photography is less a matter of
subject and more a matter of approach.
The important thing is not what’s photographed but how."
-Dorothea Lange
The quote from Dorothea Lange refers to not only the sharpness
of her eyes, but especially the sharpness of her ear. Beaumont
Newhall writes in the monograph, Dorothea Lange Looks at The American
Country Woman, "She found herself talking to the people she
photographed. At one point she told a colleague,… ‘in
the migrant camps there were always talkers. This was very helpful
to me, and I think it was helpful to them. It gave us a chance
to meet on common ground – something a photographer like
myself must find if he’s going to do good work.’"
Dorothea Lange, along with other FSA photographers such as Russell
Lee, Carl Mydans, and Gordon Parks were pioneers in the social
documentary tradition. Each of these photographers were employed
by USDA’s Resettlement Administration, which was established
in 1935, to alleviate rural poverty and assist people dislocated
by the industrialization of farming and natural disasters such
as the Dust Bowl. In 1936, Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace
changed the name to the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Today
the FSA photographers are recognized for creating images for progressive
social change and creating a compelling visual history of rural
America.
Beaumont Newhall continues, "She (Lange) began putting down
words she heard, and in 1939 she and Paul Taylor published An American
Exodus, A Record of Human Erosion, with photographs put together
with words spoken by the subjects of the photographs. It was a
bold experiment, pointing the way to a new medium where words and
pictures do not merely explain and illustrate; they reinforce one
another to produce what has been called "the third effect."
The words of farmers and ranchers inspire my life and instruct
my work as a documentary photographer and video producer. In 1987
an Illinois farmer took me to the edge of a freshly plowed field
and pointed to the horizon, saying, "There’s an education
out there." As I became a friend to farmers in a farmer-to-farmer
crisis group, I learned how industrial agriculture was draining
the life from the rural social and economic fabric. From the stories
of these farmers, my graduate thesis and exhibition, Habits and
Hearts, took shape in comparing an industrial agricultural worldview
to an emerging sustainable agricultural worldview that manages
our natural resources and enhances society as a whole. What began
as an academic exercise in blending the principles of the FSA photographers
with empathetic listening techniques has grown to be my credo.
Today I weave together the power of image and word by featuring
selections from oral history interviews I record with the Sony
VX1000 digital video camera. The people I photograph are empowered
by the mere invitation of sharing one’s story. Through both
informal visiting and formal interviews a shooting script for picture
making and video stories is created. During follow up interviews
in People Sustaining the Land, Jerry and I used photographs
as a tool for "deep listening." I wonder how Lange would
have reacted to today’s convergence of media…our ability
to blend pictures with words in digital video and cross the boundaries
between still and television journalism on the World Wide Web.
I wish to believe she would embrace the technology as tools that
enhanced her depth of observation.
Like photographers, the farm families in People Sustaining
the Land possess a keen sense of observation in the tool
box of scientific skills they apply in their daily lives of caring
for the land, the crops, the animals, their family, and their
local community. One may argue that farmers have always had this
sense, and I would agree. What one sees in the privacy of their
homes and hears in the conversations around the kitchen table
is a renewal of land traditions and management practices of biodiversity
that work in partnership with the natural world, rather than
imposing synthetic systems of production.
Breaking the ground for People Sustaining the Land unknowingly
occurred in 1994 when, with drive and passion, and the support
of George Bird, Cornelia Flora, John Ikerd, and David Schlegel,
I was able to secure a small grant through USDA-Western SARE for
the documentation of people involved in farmer-driven research.
In 1996, during a multimedia presentation of my findings, Jerry
DeWitt stepped forward and suggested we collaborate.
While the United States Department of Agriculture no longer has
an official research staff that employs photographers, various
agencies of the department do recognize the value of photographs
as documents and respect the viewpoint of local individuals dedicated
to new agricultural practices. Within each of the following USDA
agencies, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program,
the Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Agricultural
Research Service are institutional programs that are striving to
create solutions to the erosion of present-day rural America and
assist in good science that supports "local living economies"
by people choosing to live in close relationship to the land.
Fifteen years later, in 2002, my vision to renew the documentary
traditions of the Farm Security Administration has been fulfilled.
The next question I will ask is, "What do we do with the lessons
learned?" After living with farm families and walking in the
shoes of well over 100 farmers, both men and women, I can speak
with knowledge about a land-based wisdom that evolves from each
farmer’s deep and intimate love with the land they cultivate
for the production of food . Like the farmers I have walked with,
I too, am amazed at the amount of life that can be found in one
handful of soil, the sound of 1000 head of churro sheep walking
through a forest, the joy of neighboring that is amplified during
harvest, a show of lightening over the Great Plains. Listening
to farmers restores my sense of security and has deepened my faith
in the human heart…to all I am grateful.
Cynthia Vagnetti
A Journey of Connections
Some journeys simply end, while others will forever change a life.
So it was for me.
My journey of explorations across rural America with Cynthia to
more than 35 farm and ranch families from coast to coast allowed
me to listen, contemplate, and reposition my being internally.
It was a brief respite from normal academic and administrative
tasks that took me into homes, fields, and the hearts of people
with a message, a message awaiting an ear, a release and validation.
My Faculty Improvement Leave from Iowa State University caused
me to be a student once again and experience the words, untold
visions, and heartfelt aspirations of a people on the land in today’s
agriculture. From farms and ranches of 2 to 10,000 acres, I carefully
listened to their words, captured a sense of their longings and
feelings from their initial spoken interviews and moved to capture
their passions on film as expressed on the landscape in patterns,
imprints, and texture.
I have always been taken by the gentleness and soundness of the
spoken farm word. Those captured in the hoop house among the newborn
pigs, in the parched field, or at the kitchen table with hands
around a cup of steaming coffee seem to have a lasting impact in
my mind and undoubtedly on the land as I was to discover. Their
words born on the farm have been gently manifested over time in
the landscape and for the next generation. I was attracted to the
challenge and opportunity of connecting the words of sustainability
to the land and to capture visually the lasting soundness and gentleness
of these connections.
My joy was to capture on film the emotion and impact of "place"
through the inanimate, the landscape, and the product of the land.
My task was to illustrate the presence without seeing the people;
to inform and emotionally move others through these images; to
allow the message to be visualized and shared. I was a messenger
across America.
My work and collection of more than 6,000 images began to capture
only a few ephemeral emotions or feelings on the land and place
of that particular day, hour, and moment. Never to be likely repeated
or replicated, it was my momentary interpretation of the connections
that the farmer, rancher or family made at that time and place.
It was their handprint or shadow of connection to their land. It
was a manifestation of their words and aspirations.
I, yet today, remain so powerfully attracted to connections and
the subtle evidence of the imprint of the sustainable farmer on
the land; his mark, her touch, their gentle brush, the stroke of
their tools on the landscape. The callused hands and dirty fingernails
of a farmer or rancher touching the nurtured product, the moist
soil, the inanimate fencepost, weathered tool, or the fresh newborn
speaks the unspoken words of the sustainable farmer. To capture
these connections on the land signifies the unspoken essence of
a sustainable agriculture that has inspired and driven these families
to what they are today and what their children will be tomorrow.
I have been changed by what I have seen, what I have heard. I have
been a guest and student on a learning journey of people on the
land. These are the people who have sustained their land, their
lives and ultimately me. I will be forever grateful.
Jerry DeWitt
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