California migrant farm workers, a segment of society numbering over one million strong, supply the United States with more than half the produce we eat each day.

“The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers,” a traveling art, humanities and educational exhibition, uses a photojournalistic lens to look closely at their lives and through them, ask questions about the human cost of feeding America. Through forty images and bi-lingual text, this multi-layered portrait details the lives and struggles of the rarely seen faces of this invisible and consistently neglected population.

It was shot throughout the state, from the border at Calexico to the capital, Sacramento, and depicts everything from family life, the issues of women and children, to the search for housing, immigration, health care and the scraping together of culture and community. By providing these and other details this body of work aims to foster empathy with today’s migrants as well as by providing a humanistic perspective through which to understand their lives and contributions.From spring 2002 through winter 2003, photographer and writer Rick Nahmias traveled up and down the state to over fifty rural communities, photographing their people and recording their stories. The resulting body of work previewed as an official affiliate exhibit of the California Council on the Humanities “Grapes of Wrath/California Stories” program and has gone on to tour museums, universities, and cultural centers throughout North America.

It earned a U.S. Congressional Citation from Representative Loretta Sanchez.  In addition to the traveling exhibit and book, numerous educational programs have been created to help students and communities creatively reconnect to farm worker issues and communities in their own regions. Through benefits and print sales, “The Migrant Project” continues to raise awareness as well as thousands of dollars for numerous non-profit and charitable farm worker organizations.

For information on hosting the exhibition, print sales, or educational workshops with the artist, please e-mail us at info@rcnphoto.com

The traveling exhibit includes a half-hour documentary on farm worker issues as seen through the lens of the exhibit. The video was produced by KCET’s “Life & Times.”
The body of work, along with numerous essays, oral histories, and a foreword by Dolores Huerta, has just been published as a monograph by University of New Mexico Press. LINK TO BOOK
The Migrant Project is also meant to be an interactive resource fostering awareness based on these issues via educational workshops and a new standards based 7-12th grade CD ROM curriculum. LINK TO CURRICULUM