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In Camps, Under Trees and Evicted: Farmworkers and People Living Close to the Line in Northern California

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Shields Library (Lobby - Archives and Special Collections)

September 13, 2025 - December 14, 2025

This traveling exhibition of more than 80 photographs by labor photographer and journalist David Bacon was brought to Shields Library by the UC Davis Labor and Community Center at the School of Law.

Artist’s Statement

Farmworkers and other people living close to the line are virtually invisible in the picture most people see of Northern California. Some live in cities like Stockton or Fairfield, while others live in labor camps. Others don’t have a stable place to live at all, and sleep in tents or under trees, scattered in fields and orchards.

But like their brothers and sisters throughout the state, they don’t suffer poverty idly. They have a long history of resistance, and a fight for conditions that afford a decent life, from the 14-year strike at Diamond Walnut to the marches for decent wages and legal immigration status.

These photographs were taken over 35 years, a window into what I saw as a labor photographer and writer during that time. They cannot possibly be a complete picture of who lives and works in rural Northern California, and what people have fought for. But I hope they can inspire a new generation to pick up and carry on the tradition of documentary art that springs from working people and is part of their movements for justice.

—David Bacon

Read more

Selected Works

A Punjabi man wearing work gloves leans over a large barrel of peaches.
MARYSVILLE, CA – Monasingh Kuribala, a Punjabi worker, sorted peaches.
A farm laborer sits on a cot in the foreground, looking down. Two other workers sit in the shade of a tarp in the background.
GRATON, CA – Migrant indigenous Chatino workers from Oaxaca live under tarps next to a field of wine grapes. Their cultural practices and family ties helped them support each other while looking for farm work in one of the wealthiest wine-producing areas of the US. (Courtesy of David Bacon)
A woman holds a sign that reads North Bay Trabajos con Justicia. Other protestors hold signs and flags in the background.
HEALDSBURG, CA – Sonoma County farmworkers marched through Healdsburg demanding a wage of dignity (sueldo digno) and disaster pay, organized by North Bay Jobs With Justice.