Events

Beyond Borders

Photographs by David Bacon
Tuesday April 26, 2011 - 09:05:00 PM

Addison Street Windows Gallery presents documentary photographs by David Bacon about indigenous migration to the United States from Mexico. Photographer and journalist David Bacon documents an important aspect of the reality of the migrant experience -- the creation of "transnational communities".
This candid and forthright documentation functions as a reality check, showing the human face of people and communities often stereotyped by hysteria and political controversy over immigration. Indigenous communities are often simply invisible, especially to city dwellers, although today anyone eating a lemon or strawberry is likely consuming the product of the labor of indigenous farm workers.

These photographs take us inside these communities and illuminate the ties that bind people together, the influence of their working conditions on migrants and their families, their health and their collective and personal struggles for better lives. Images in the project also show the social movements in Mexico that challenge the poverty and community displacement that make migration a question of basic human survival.
Beyond Borders is part of a larger project, Living Under the Trees, in which Bacon, over the last decade, has documented communities of indigenous migrants from Mexico, now living in rural California towns and working in the fields. The project contains thousands of images, many of which have been exhibited nationally. Beyond Borders contains 29 large digital color prints from this collection.
This exhibit is in the Addison Street Windows Gallery, located on Addison Street between Milvia Street and Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley's downtown Arts District. It can be viewed 24 hours a day from the sidewalk. The exhibit is free and wheelchair accessible.

For more information, contact:
David Bacon/ photographer dbacon@igc.org
Mary Ann Merker/ Civic Arts Coordinator MMerker@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Greg Morozumi/ curator gmorozumi@yahoo.com
Sponsored by the Civic Arts Program of the City of Berkeley in cooperation with the Civic Arts Commission. Living Under the Trees is a cooperative project with California Rural Legal Assistance and the Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales.

Addison Street Windows Gallery
2018 Addison Street (between Shattuck Av./ Milvia St.) Berkeley, CA
April 22 thru May 31, 2011

street encuentro / meet the artist --
Thursday, May 12, 6-8 PM, at the Windows

For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
 

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
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David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org

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