More than 70 years ago, John Steinbeck wrote: “There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty.” Photographer Brian Frank knows that well. For the better part of two decades, Frank has been documenting the “dreadful beauty” of migrant communities both north and south of the border. His current project, “East of Eden” — named for the 1952 Steinbeck novel from which the quote is taken — captures the lives of migrant communities in California’s Central Valley.
After graduating from San Francisco State University with a journalism degree, Frank went on to document farm workers in Latin America for several years. He was drawn back north after realizing that many of the struggles farmers faced there were also being felt by migrant farmers in the U.S.
“It blew up my worldview in a couple of ways,” he tells The Rooted Journal. “I was trying to highlight the injustice going on south of the border. Guess what? The same thing was going on actually north of the border, too. I didn’t know that until I started photographing it.”
Workers pick stone fruit on a day choked by wildfire smoke in the Valley.
Frank’s work has been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, but he’s hoping to share “East of Eden” in the Central Valley community.
The series is split into three chapters, exploring the journey migrant workers make from Latin America to the U.S. and their connections to faith.
Frank’s subjects are the same communities that Steinbeck wrote about in “The Grapes of Wrath,” a story that Frank feels is surprisingly relevant today, more than 80 years after the novel was published in 1939.
“The work is still the same. The struggles are still the same,” he says. “In some ways, the struggles are worse now for this community because they also have to worry about getting taken from their families and deported.”
Ahead, Frank discusses his years embedded with the migrant communities of the Central Valley and the challenges faced by migrant farmers today.
THE ROOTED JOURNAL How did you connect with the Central Valley communities you’re documenting in “East of Eden”?
Brian Frank I’ve been working on issues like this for quite a long time. Over many years, I’ve built up contacts with the United Farm Workers Union, with individual private farmers, with a broad spectrum of folks.
So when I go to these areas, I’m not just starting from zero. A lot of organizations that are working in this community have an interest in helping shed light on what’s going on in that world.
During COVID, there was an organization that was just trying to feed people. Because folks literally were not getting enough food because they lost their source of income. They can’t rely on any form of public assistance because they are undocumented. They’ve worked their whole lives in this country, and they are going to starve, right?
So some of these food organizations were like, “We’re delivering food to grandmas. We can introduce you to some of them.”
Those types of organizations are always key, and they help introduce you to folks. I would go a lot to community events and not take pictures and just hang out.
I think when you’re face-to-face, people can tell whether you care or not. When I spent time with folks, they would see that I had been putting a lot of effort and time into this, that I know about the historical influences on these issues, that it’s something that I’m not just trying to pop in and out of and not invest in them. I think when people see that investment they start giving you access.
1. Part of the migrant caravan. Large numbers of migrants travel together for safety with the hope of arriving in the U.S. and finding a better life for their families and escape from violence. Migrants wait in the rain for food being handed out by the local church at Barretal disco turned into a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.
2. Workers at home in the Central Valley after working in the nearby corn fields.
TRJ “East of Eden” refers to a Steinbeck novel, which was itself a reference to the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. But this work seems most closely tied to Steinbeck’s migration epic “The Grapes of Wrath.” What connection do you see between what Steinbeck was writing about and the migrant community in the Central Valley?
BF When you go to the same migrant camp that’s mentioned in “The Grapes of Wrath” now, you realize this is the housing. It’s still here. The people that occupy the spaces, that is the same. The struggles are still the same. In some ways, the struggles are worse now for this community because they also have to worry about getting taken from their families and deported.
But there are still folks living in the housing that people in the ’30s were living in at some of these camps. They’re still migrant labor camps, and now maybe they insulated the walls, but it’s the same buildings even going back 100 years. It doesn’t feel like there’s been a lot of change. I’ve even seen numbers that show that, adjusted for inflation, people are actually making the same or less now than farmers during the Dust Bowl era. Which is crazy.
Abuela Petra Ramirez in Fresno, CA, toiled in the fields and raised children who became police officers and teachers. Grandmothers are active volunteers in the community and the glue between many generations of Latino immigrants in the Valley and their homelands and traditions. Ramirez has been a Catholic activist for most of her adult life and relies on her faith to bring a message into correctional facilities to pray with inmates and work for positive change.
TRJ What’s something most people don’t understand about the migrant population in the U.S.?
BF There’s this big misconception that the migrant community is this single voting bloc. The left side of the political spectrum in this country takes it for granted. They basically view the migrant-worker community as all one voice, and they are all of one opinion that all that matters to them is legal status and migrant issues.
This is a diverse group of people with diverse priorities, just like any other group. The media only shows these folks as a unit of labor and in their relationship to migration, and that’s it.
Regardless of political ideology, we all rely on these folks in exactly the same way every single day. If you act like you don’t need these folks, you’re just wrong. It doesn’t matter — right, left, whatever. It’s their labor that is feeding us. I just don’t understand how there’s a disconnect there. It’s just sort of an out-of-mind thing that people are so disconnected from their food supplies at this point in this country.
1. A worker harvests stone fruit in the fields outside Fresno, CA.
2. Central Coast workers harvest strawberries.
TRJ That’s true. That disconnect seems to fuel a lot of the anti-immigrant mentality in this country because people don’t understand how migrant laborers are doing the jobs Americans won’t do.
BF Talk to any farm owner. They could be the biggest and most “build the wall” right-wing evangelical, like, you know, “We need strict borders.” And then, at the same time, they will say, “Americans will not do this work.”
So to think that you can survive without those folks is absolutely wrong. It isn’t possible. There is no large-scale agriculture in this country without those folks. It doesn’t exist, right?
One of the biggest problems in these areas is getting labor, getting folks that will do the work. Even with the porous border, they don’t have enough people. The farms get hit harder than anyone when there are crackdowns on migrant labor.
Believe me, none of us are trying to do that work. So I don’t know what the supposed solution is to that. When folks are just acting like we can live without these folks, I’m like, “Really, are you gonna go do the work?”
Because I’m not. That work is hard, miserable. It’s brutal. It’s dangerous.
Migrant workers’ children play ball to pass time while their parents harvest the surrounding grapes in Arvin, CA.
This is the same camp from the novel, “Grapes of Wrath.”
TRJ How has this project changed the way you think about food and the farming industry?
BF The Central Valley provides 25% of fruits, nuts, and vegetables for our whole country. They’re feeding everybody. If that were to disappear tomorrow, food prices would quadruple, right?
It’s so easy to not realize how much labor goes into what we eat until you’ve been in a field and realized how much labor goes into even a raisin. These guys are in the 100-degree heat, sweating to get this little piece of fruit.
You just have no comprehension of it. I grew up with my little box of raisins. I just never would ever, ever really think — even coming from a labor background — you don’t really get how intense and hard it is to do farm work.
I look at the vegetables in the supermarket much differently because I’ve been there, and I’ve seen how fast, hard, and good at their jobs folks are, and I couldn’t do it.
We expect now to get lettuce that’s fresh, clean, and perfect in every way. The hands that are on that are just excellent at what they do.
You just don’t think about it. It just magically appears, right? But I don’t have any way of looking at it now other than through that lens because I’ve seen it so much and I just have a much different level of respect for that world.
Frank passionately supports organizations dedicated to the well-being and rights of migrant workers. His chosen charities focus on providing essential healthcare, legal aid, and advocacy to improve the lives of these often-overlooked communities.
TRJ What’s next for the project? Are there more chapters coming?
BF You know, I don’t know if there will be. I’m hoping to bring the work to the Valley, and I want to also bring the work to Mexico.
I want to show it in places that are a bit outside the box, and that would have direct reach to people who wouldn’t normally get to see it and help them interact with the work and also see themselves reflected.
When folks see themselves reflected in that way, hopefully, they feel something. That’s the main purpose of all our music, painting, whatever, literature. It’s just to get people to feel something and to feel something regardless of their background. Everybody can feel art. I want to regift the work to these places. They gifted me their time and access, so I want to provide them with an experience where they can feel something for the investment that they gave me.
We expect now to get lettuce that’s fresh, clean, and perfect in every way. The hands that are on that are just excellent at what they do.
You just don’t think about it. It just magically appears, right? But I don’t have any way of looking at it now other than through that lens because I’ve seen it so much and I just have a much different level of respect for that world.
