Building a New Future: Art and Activism in the Central Valley

George Ballis’ photography captures key moments and figures in farmworkers’ organizing movements, and reveals the ongoing legacies of these community actions and cultural productions.

The industrial-scale agriculture that dominates California’s Central Valley has historically relied on groups of seasonal, mostly migrant farmworkers. Foreign nationals from Asia, Mexico, and the Middle East; Black Americans from the rural South; and members of other marginalized groups have been attracted to the world’s most productive agricultural region by the promise of employment and economic opportunity. Instead, farmworkers have faced meager wages, substandard housing, lack of access to clean water and healthcare, harsh conditions, and exploitation. Attempts to organize any action against these conditions have typically been met with retaliation, and often with violence. While California fruits and vegetables predominate in the marketplace, the plight of the farmworkers remained largely hidden from the public eye.

George “Elfie” Ballis (1925-2010) moved to Fresno in 1953 to become editor of a labor newspaper. There, he began taking photographs of migrant workers’ housing and working conditions and tried to establish trusting, respectful relationships with his subjects. Mentored by photographer Dorothea Lange, Ballis documented farm labor and living conditions in California’s Central Valley, and created some of the most iconic images of farmworker organizing efforts. Movement organizers used Ballis’ images to publicize the cause, and they were also supplied to the popular press to galvanize public support. Building a New Future: Art and Activism in the Central Valley chronicles Ballis’ photographs, and the development of this broad-based movement garnering national attention and support.

Building a New Future provides an historical lens to consider how individuals and groups come together to enact social change, and how imagery and photojournalism played an important role in both telling and shaping the stories in the public’s eye.

This exhibition was developed by the UC Merced Library and tours through Exhibit Envoy.