Category: Agriculture

Stripping Tobacco

Agriculture, Farm, Harvest, North Carolina, Portraits, Randolph County, Tobacco

Today is the first day since I lost my dear wife Dedra that I have felt like reengaging with social media. Yesterday I continued a personnel project to document migrant farm workers that work on local farms. I have been photographing these guys for several years now and they know who I am and what I do. Through my broken Spanish and their broken English we have managed to communicate and I am happy to say that some of their girlfriends and wives in Mexico follow my feeds in order to see images of their partners at work. Their humanity is profound and their work ethic is unmatched. My wife Dedra always enjoyed looking at the portraits I have been able to capture and she always had a respect for the hard work these guys produced. Today I thanked them for letting me move among them and record their lives. I think my dear Dedra would approve.

Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

(Photograph copyright 2021 by Dan Routh)