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“They’re in situ on the train, they really blend in with the ads,” Hamilton said.
And she’s OK with that.
“We weren’t making ads for rural California, it’s not a PSA. It’s not a tourism campaign," she said, "You feel a human connection to them for a second, maybe, that’s all I ask. And these places feel close to you instead of far away."
Hamilton has made a career out of writing about and photographing farflung agriculture communities in the United States. Her latest project is Real Rural, a multi-media collaboration with the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford Universtiy and nonprofit Roots of Change that shines a light on the little explored communities of rural California. The photographs were turned into a website and a BART campaign that rolled out Monday.
Beginning in November, Hamilton took to the road, carving out a year-long 10,000 mile route through the rural parts of the state that she says many urban dwellers forget, or don’t even know, exist. She’s quick to point out that this project is not about agriculture, although that’s in there, too. There are all kinds of people represented in her work: there’s an 11-year-old boxer, a pot farmer, and a doctor. Hamilton photographed people in places with names like Firebaugh, Bitterwater Valley, and Cottonwood.
She described driving down Highway 33 and passing into an oil field abundant with oil derricks. She was “bewitched” by what she described as a “post-apocalyptic” dusty landscape that is either so hot or so cold that people hardly leave the confines of their trucks.
“I saw a sign pointing to a school,” she said, “and I took the turn and drove past the oil derricks and then past that into sort of a No Man’s Land. And right up against the foothills I saw this local complex. There’s a fairly new school there, it was filled with kids, there’s a track out back. Even deep in this project I had forgotten that there were people there.”
The urban disconnect from rural people has many implications, Hamilton said.
“The consequences of not having a connection of any kind with people outside cities and suburban areas is that our conversation about really important, basic survival issues are reduced to very simple arguments when there’s a whole range of views that are valid and need to be considered,” she said.
She provided the example of water, which for city dwellers often boils down to an abstract idea of conservation. In rural California, water effects people’s lives daily. Hamilton spoke of patients with diabetes who could no longer afford medication because lack of water had directly affected their earning power and a Native American activist who opposed the raising of a dam that would flood ancestral land.
When Hamilton struck out, she brought an unusual traveling buddy: her six-month-old daughter Ada, who grew up on the road.
“The first time she pulled herself up to standing we were pulled over on the side of I-5 on the way to the Red Bluff Rodeo,” said Hamilton.
She described shooting a rodeo trick riding practice session from inside the arena, where Ada couldn’t be around unpredictable horses. A rider's mom held her on the sidelines.
“There’s a secret society of moms. You can always find a mom to help you out,” she said.
From the beginning, Hamilton and her collaborators knew that they wanted to use unconventional mediums to tell the story. The website uses a combination of photos, text, and audio files.
“I didn’t want to make a book or do a show in a gallery, I wanted to do this in a way that reached as broad a spectrum of people as possible,” Hamilton said. “…I feel like the world has enough books with portraits of people with little blurbs about them.”
In addition to displaying the artwork on BART, there will be billboards in Los Angeles and Sacramento, and a show at the California Historical Society that will contrast Hamilton’s images with historical ones.
“Ultimately what draws me to people in all my work is people who are passionate about something,” Hamilton said. “Whether it’s where they live, or breeding wheat, or raising 4-H pigs. And they’re so passionate about it that they’re willing to defy all the rules that the world puts down for them.”
Correction: A previous version stated that an activist was concerned over the razing of a dam. He is concerned over the raising of a dam. Additionally, Lisa Hamilton did not shoot from the arena of the Red Bluff Rodeo, but rather from a trick riding practice, where a rider's mother held her daughter.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
