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

 

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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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