This Camera Fights Fascism: The Photographs of David Bacon and Francisco Dominguez

Art Exhibit: de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University
Santa Clara, CA
July 29 – December 4, 2011 and January 14 – February 5, 2012
Tuesday – Sunday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Opening Thursday, September 22nd, 6PM

David Bacon and Francisco Dominguez have both followed in the tradition of
Depression-era photographers such as Dorothea Lange, focusing their cameras
on struggle, dissent, immigrants, and workers. Their photographs speak to
the global character of contemporary migration. Like the so-called Okies of
the Depression, many of today’s migrants have been displaced by
environmental degradation and wider economic forces.

The title of this exhibition refers to a sign that 1930s folk musician
Woody Guthrie often had on his guitar, “This Machine Kills Fascists.” These
two photographers build a powerful body of visual evidence of the continuing
struggle of workers, migrants, and poor people to survive. In this
exhibition the photographers responded to images by Dorothea Lange and selected
photographs from their own work that draw close connections between the 1930s
and today.

David Bacon is a photojournalist who has documented the movements of farm
workers, social protest from Iraq and Mexico to the U.S., and the migration
of people. He is the author of several books, and many of the images in
this show are from Communities Without Borders, Images and Words from the
World of Migration.

Francisco Dominguez is a photographer and printmaker. His parents both
were farm workers. He documents the struggles of indigenous, immigrant, and
poor people in black and white photography. Art Hazelwood, Guest Curator

To view the slide show please go to:
www.scu.edu/desaisset/exhibitions/Camera-Slide.cfm

This exhibition is taking place at the museum simultaneously with
Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New
Deal to the Present and Between Struggle and Hope: Envisioning a Democratic Art in the 1930s
July 29 – December 4, 2011, also curated by Art Hazelwood

For more articles and images, see 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
www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
(University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org